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Solid Earth change and the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Whitehouse, P.L.; Gomez, N.; King, M.A.; Wiens, D.A.

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Authors

N. Gomez

M.A. King

D.A. Wiens



Abstract

Recent studies suggest that Antarctica has the potential to contribute up to ~15 m of sea-level rise over the next few centuries. The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is driven by a combination of climate forcing and non-climatic feedbacks. In this review we focus on feedbacks between the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the solid Earth, and the role of these feedbacks in shaping the response of the ice sheet to past and future climate changes. The growth and decay of the Antarctic Ice Sheet reshapes the solid Earth via isostasy and erosion. In turn, the shape of the bed exerts a fundamental control on ice dynamics as well as the position of the grounding line—the location where ice starts to float. A complicating issue is the fact that Antarctica is situated on a region of the Earth that displays large spatial variations in rheological properties. These properties affect the timescale and strength of feedbacks between ice-sheet change and solid Earth deformation, and hence must be accounted for when considering the future evolution of the ice sheet.

Citation

Whitehouse, P., Gomez, N., King, M., & Wiens, D. (2019). Solid Earth change and the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature Communications, 10, Article 503. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08068-y

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 15, 2018
Online Publication Date Jan 30, 2019
Publication Date Jan 30, 2019
Deposit Date Dec 7, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Article Number 503
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08068-y

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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