Connected subglacial lake drainage beneath Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica

Smith, Benjamin E.; Gourmelen, Noel; Huth, Alexander; Joughin, Ian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-451-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-451-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-451-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 1

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

08 Feb 2017

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 08 Feb 2017

Connected subglacial lake drainage beneath Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica

Benjamin E. Smith, Noel Gourmelen, Alexander Huth, and Ian Joughin

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Feb 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 28 Jul 2016)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Sep 2016
- AC1: 'Authors' reply to referee 1.', Ben Smith, 05 Nov 2016
RC2: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'Authors' response to Referee 2.', Ben Smith, 06 Nov 2016
EC1: 'editor comment', Jonathan Bamber, 03 Oct 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Benjamin Smith on behalf of the Authors (24 Nov 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Dec 2016) by Jonathan Bamber

ED: Publish as is (03 Jan 2017) by Jonathan Bamber

AR by Benjamin Smith on behalf of the Authors (11 Jan 2017)

Short summary

In this paper we investigate elevation changes of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, one of the main sources of excess ice discharge into the ocean. We find that in early 2013, four subglacial lakes separated by 100 km drained suddenly, discharging more than 3 km³ of water under the fastest part of the glacier in less than 6 months. Concurrent ice-speed measurements show only minor changes, suggesting that ice dynamics are not strongly sensitive to changes in water flow.