Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

DOI

10.1029/2019GL086522

Publication Title

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

47

Issue

13

Pages

1-11

Abstract

Getz Ice Shelf, the largest producer of ice shelf meltwater in Antarctica, buttresses glaciers that hold enough ice to raise sea level by 22 cm. We present a new bathymetry of its sub‐ice shelf cavity using a three‐dimensional inversion of airborne gravity data constrained by multibeam bathymetry at sea and a reconstruction of the bedrock from mass conservation on land. The new bathymetry is deeper than previously estimated with differences exceeding 500 m in a number of regions. When incorporated into an ocean model, it yields a better description of the spatial distribution of ice shelf melt, specifically along glacier grounding lines. While the melt intensity is overestimated because of a positive bias in ocean thermal forcing, the study reveals the main pathways along which warm oceanic water enters the cavity and corroborates the observed rapid retreat of Berry Glacier along a deep channel with a retrograde bed slope.

Rights

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2020 American Geophysical Union.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data used in the manuscript are archived at datadryad.org (https://doi.org/10.7280/D1XM31). The bathymetry is already part of BedMachine v1 which is publicly available at https://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0756/."

Original Publication Citation

Millan, R., St‐Laurent, P., Rignot, E., Morlighem, M., Mouginot, J., & Scheuchl, B. (2020). Constraining an ocean model under Getz Ice Shelf, Antarctica, using a gravity‐derived bathymetry. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(13), 1-11, Article e2019GL086522. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086522

ORCID

0000-0002-1700-9509 (St-Laurent)

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