Hot, Warm, & Cold Thermal Facts: Tidewater-Glaciers - 9

Fig. 1 Modified Graphic from here

It was recently reported by the University of California at Irvine that a team of glaciologists led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine used high-resolution satellite radar data to find evidence of the intrusion of warm, high-pressure seawater many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier (Vigorous melting at Antarctica).

The Thwaites Glacier paper researchers wrote:

"The Antarctic Ice Sheet has been a major contributor to sea level rise over the past four decades ... The mass loss is not caused by a decrease in snowfall, but

Fig. 2 Ice-melt & Seawater Temperatures

by a speed-up of glaciers in West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Wilkes Land sector of East Antarctica. Glacier speed-up has been attributed to an increase in glacier melt in contact with warm, salty ocean waters of circumpolar origin, or circumpolar deep water ... CDW has gained access to the continental shelf, ice cavities, and glaciers over the past 40 y ... due to an increase in the strength of the westerly winds ... itself caused by the combined effect of rapid climate warming over the rest of the planet from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and a cooling of the Antarctic stratosphere from the human-induced depletion of the stratospheric ozone ... Central to the glacier loss are the physical processes taking place at the transition boundary between grounded ice and ice floating into the ocean, or 'grounding line'.”

(Widespread seawater intrusions beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier). An actual example of the seawater temperatures (Conservative Temperature) at various depths compared to glacial ice melt temperatures is shown at Fig. 2.

Fig. 3 Thwaites Glacier Area

Other sets of actual 'warm water' and 'cold ice' temperatures are shown by using World Ocean Database (WOD) in situ measurements at three Pelagic depths (Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, see Fig. 3).

The Thwaites Glacier is in Western Antarctica but similar results have been pointed out some years ago by another team studying the Totten Glacier in Eastern Antarctica (Totten Glacier: Scientists Identify New Threat to East Antarctic Ice).

What is really coming home in Dr. Rignot et alia's paper is that the 'Old World' ideas of Antarcitca 1.0 were way off base (Antarctica 2.0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 [& supplements A, B, C, D, E, F], 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15).

The previous post in this series is here.