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Disintegration and Buttressing Effect of the Landfast Sea Ice in the Larsen B Embayment, Antarctic Peninsula
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Disintegration and Buttressing Effect of the Landfast Sea Ice in the Larsen B Embayment, Antarctic Peninsula
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Disintegration and Buttressing Effect of the Landfast Sea Ice in the Larsen B Embayment, Antarctic Peninsula
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Journal Article
Disintegration and Buttressing Effect of the Landfast Sea Ice in the Larsen B Embayment, Antarctic Peninsula
2023
Overview
The speed‐up of glaciers following ice shelf collapse can accelerate ice mass loss dramatically. Investigating the deformation of landfast sea ice enables studying its resistive (buttressing) stresses and mechanisms driving ice collapse. Here, we apply offset tracking to Sentinel‐1A/B synthetic aperture radar data to obtain a 2014–2022 time‐series of horizontal velocity and strain rate fields of landfast ice filling the embayment formerly covered by the Larsen B Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula until 2002. The landfast ice disintegrated in 2022, and we find that it was precipitated by a few large opening rifts. Grounded glaciers did not accelerate instantaneously after the collapse, which implies little buttressing effect from landfast ice, a conclusion also supported by the near‐zero correlation between glacier velocity and landfast ice area. Our observations suggest that buttressing stresses are unlikely to be recovered by landfast sea ice over sub‐decadal timescales following the collapse of an ice shelf. Plain Language Summary The Antarctic Ice Sheet is a potentially major contributor to sea‐level rise due to glaciers' dynamic response to changing oceanic and atmospheric conditions. Its floating extensions, ice shelves, play a critical role in stabilizing the ice sheet by resisting the flow of glaciers that feed into them. However, ice shelves can collapse rapidly. In 2002, a Rhode Island‐sized section of the Larsen B Ice Shelf disintegrated, causing adjacent glaciers to speed up. In 2011, landfast sea ice replaced the ice shelf in the Larsen B embayment, but it broke up in 2022. We use remote sensing data to investigate why the landfast ice collapsed and whether it resisted glacier flow as the ice shelf did. We show that opening rifts may be responsible for ice disintegration. We find no detectable buttressing effect from the landfast ice because glaciers did not speed up after removing landfast ice, and seasonal change of landfast ice extent did not affect the grounded glacier velocities. It may be because landfast ice is thinner and easier to deform than the ice shelf. Our observations suggest a possible precursor to ice collapse and highlight the limited role that landfast ice plays in slowing down ice mass loss. Key Points We produce time‐dependent velocity and strain rate fields over Larsen B landfast sea ice from 2014 to 2022 Opening rifts within the landfast sea ice may contribute to its disintegration in 2022 Landfast sea ice provides no apparent buttressing to the upstream grounded glaciers
