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Normal Operations of an Antarctic Glacier Speeding Up
OCEANS, ICE, WATER, & FISH
Glacial Mechanics of Pine Island Glacier
NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.
Normal Operations of an Antarctic Glacier Speeding Up
The Wide View of a Shrinking Glacier: Retreat at Pine Island,
NASA Earth Observatory, April 9, 2019.
MAIN POINTS
Thinning & Retreating Faster
“...a shrinking outlet glacier is usually doing three things: thinning (mostly at the seaward edge), retreating, and accelerating. The acceleration stretches the glacier, causing the thinning and likely making the ice more prone to crevassing (cracking) “upstream.”
Shrinking
“...over the long term at Pine Island, you can see that the ice front has retreated inland, which means the calving rate has increased more than the glacier has accelerated. “This underlies our concern that retreating outlet glaciers can ‘shrink’ rapidly.”
Quicker Calving
“Large calving events used to take place at Pine Island Glacier every four to six years. More recently, calving has occurred on a near-annual basis and the bergs tend to break up more easily into smaller pieces.”
Pine Island Icebergs
2001: B-21
2007: B-27
2013: B-31
2015: B-35 and B-41
2017: B-44
2018: B-46
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climate change, Antarctica, Pine Island Glacier, speeding up, retreating, calving
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