The Cryosphere
The Cryosphere
TC
Articles | Volume 17, issue 8
Articles | Volume 17, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 17, issue 8
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
23 Aug 2023
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 23 Aug 2023

Widespread slowdown in thinning rates of West Antarctic ice shelves

Fernando S. Paolo, Alex S. Gardner, Chad A. Greene, Johan Nilsson, Michael P. Schodlok, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, and Helen A. Fricker

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023-supplement

Data sets

Spatially and temporally continuous reconstruction of Antarctic Amundsen Sea sector ice sheet surface velocities: 1996-2018 Alex Gardner https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7809354

MEaSUREs ITS_LIVE Regional Glacier and Ice Sheet Surface Velocities A. Gardner, M. Fahnestock, and T. Scambos https://doi.org/10.5067/6II6VW8LLWJ7

MEaSUREs ITS_LIVE Antarctic Ice Shelf Height Change and Basal Melt Rates Fernando S. Paolo, Alex S. Gardner, Chad A. Greene, and Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel https://doi.org/10.5067/SE3XH9RXQWAM

Output from the Glacier Energy and Mass Balance (GEMB beta) forced with 3-hourly ERA5 fields and gridded to 5km Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel and Alex Gardner https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7786998

Model code and software

fspaolo/captoolkit: First release (0.1.0) Fernando Paolo, Johan Nilsson, and Alex Gardner https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3665785

Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model, development version r24739 ISSM Team https://issm.jpl.nasa.gov/download/binaries/

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Co-editor-in-chief
This paper presents changes in thickness, flow and basal melt of Antarctic ice shelves over the past 26 years at relatively high resolution. An analysis based on an ocean model investigates the ice-ocean feedbacks. Overall, this is very useful for a large Antarctic research community.
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Short summary
We report on a slowdown in the rate of thinning and melting of West Antarctic ice shelves. We present a comprehensive assessment of the Antarctic ice shelves, where we analyze at a continental scale the changes in thickness, flow, and basal melt over the past 26 years. We also present a novel method to estimate ice shelf change from satellite altimetry and a time-dependent data set of ice shelf thickness and basal melt rates at an unprecedented resolution.
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