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Complex evolving patterns of mass loss from Antarctica’s largest glacier

Nature Geoscience volume 13, pages 127–131 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Pine Island Glacier has contributed more to sea level rise over the past four decades than any other glacier in Antarctica. Model projections indicate that this will continue in the future but at conflicting rates. Some models suggest that mass loss could dramatically increase over the next few decades, resulting in a rapidly growing contribution to sea level and fast retreat of the grounding line, where the grounded ice meets the ocean. Other models indicate more moderate losses. Resolving this contrasting behaviour is important for sea level rise projections. Here, we use high-resolution satellite observations of elevation change since 2010 to show that thinning rates are now highest along the slow-flow margins of the glacier and that the present-day amplitude and pattern of elevation change is inconsistent with fast grounding-line migration and the associated rapid increase in mass loss over the next few decades. Instead, our results support model simulations that imply only modest changes in grounding-line location over that timescale. We demonstrate how the pattern of thinning is evolving in complex ways both in space and time and how rates in the fast-flowing central trunk have decreased by about a factor five since 2007.

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Fig. 1: PIG elevation, velocity and driving stress changes between 2005 and 2018.
Fig. 2: Elevation change over PIG between 2010 and 2018.
Fig. 3: Ice-shelf thinning rates for PIG, 1994–2017.
Fig. 4: Profile along a central flowline of PIG.

Data availability

The gridded swath-processed CryoSat datasets are available from the University of Bristol data portal at https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.xzwd95jqfpok2hi0tkxs5r6at. CryoSat-2 data were provided by the European Space Agency and are available from https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/-/how-to-access-cryosat-data-6842. ICESat-1 data, MEaSURES grounding lines and GoLIVE velocities are available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado, USA. Envisat data used in this study are available from https://doi.org/10.5270/EN1-ajb696a. The EIGEN-6C4 data are available from ref. 48, RACMO2.3 from https://www.projects.science.uu.nl/iceclimate/models/antarctica.php and Bedmap2 bedrock topography from https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/bedmap-2/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank G.H. Gudmundsson and I. Joughin for comments on a draft of the manuscript. This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/N011511/1. J.L.B. was also supported by the European Research Council under grant agreement 694188 and a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bristol Glaciology Centre, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Jonathan L. Bamber & Geoffrey J. Dawson

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  1. Jonathan L. Bamber
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Contributions

J.L.B. conceived the study and wrote the paper. G.D. undertook the data analysis and developed the methods. Both authors commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jonathan L. Bamber.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Data density of CryoSat-2 observations for POCA and swath processing.

Number of observations per km plots for 1 year of CryoSat-2 swath (a) and POCA (b) data. With the mean surface elevation rate derived from swath (c) and POCA (d) data, for the period 2010-2018 for comparison.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Annual time series of elevation change over PIG.

Surface elevation rate derived from CryoSat-2 POCA and swath data for three-year moving window centred on the years between 2012-2017 at 4 km postings. The dark red lines are mean velocity contours for the period 2005-2017and the star is the location of the INMN GPS station. The dashed black box is the area shown in Fig. 1 and the solid black line is a composite of the 2011 and 2015 grounding line position.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Standard errors of the elevation change observations.

Standard error to the model fit for ICESat-1 and CryoSat-2, with ICESat-1 tracks overlain on the CryoSat-2 grid. The black dashed line is the grounding line recorded in 2011 and contours are mean velocities for the period 2005-2017.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Change in ice velocity between 2013 and 2017.

Ice velocity change calculated between 2013 and 2017 (with white directional arrows) using GoLIVE Landsat 8 ice velocities. Contours are mean velocities for the period 2011 to 2017 and the black dashed line is the grounding line recorded in 2011.

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Supplementary Table 1.

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Bamber, J.L., Dawson, G.J. Complex evolving patterns of mass loss from Antarctica’s largest glacier. Nat. Geosci. 13, 127–131 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0527-z

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