Effect of Sedimentation on Ice-Sheet Grounding-Line Stability

Sedimentation filling space beneath ice shelves helps to stabilize ice sheets against grounding-line retreat in response to a rise in relative sea level of at least several meters. Recent Antarctic changes thus cannot be attributed to sea-level rise, strengthening earlier interpretations that warmin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2007-03, Vol.315 (5820), p.1838-1841
Main Authors: Alley, Richard B, Anandakrishnan, Sridhar, Dupont, Todd K, Parizek, Byron R, Pollard, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alleys
Climate change
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Geophysics
Global warming
Ice
Ice sheets
Ice shelves
Ice streams
Marine
Marine and continental quaternary
Quaternary glacial periods
Sea level
Sea level rise
Sedimentation & deposition
Sediments
Snow. Ice. Glaciers
Surficial geology
Topographical elevation
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Summary:Sedimentation filling space beneath ice shelves helps to stabilize ice sheets against grounding-line retreat in response to a rise in relative sea level of at least several meters. Recent Antarctic changes thus cannot be attributed to sea-level rise, strengthening earlier interpretations that warming has driven ice-sheet mass loss. Large sea-level rise, such as the [almost equal to]100-meter rise at the end of the last ice age, may overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation, but smaller sea-level changes are unlikely to have synchronized the behavior of ice sheets in the past.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1138396