Articles | Volume 17, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023
Research article
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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

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Cited articles

Adusumilli, S., Fricker, H. A., Siegfried, M. R., Padman, L., Paolo, F. S., and Ligtenberg, S. R. M.: Variable Basal Melt Rates of Antarctic Peninsula Ice Shelves, 1994–2016, Geophys. Res. Lett., 45, 4086–4095, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076652, 2018. 
Adusumilli, S., Fricker, H. A., Medley, B., Padman, L., and Siegfried, M. R.: Interannual variations in meltwater input to the Southern Ocean from Antarctic ice shelves, Nat. Geosci., 13, 616–620, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0616-z, 2020. 
Armitage, T. W. K., Kwok, R., Thompson, A. F., and Cunningham, G.: Dynamic Topography and Sea Level Anomalies of the Southern Ocean: Variability and Teleconnections, J. Geophys. Res.-Oceans, 123, 613–630, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JC013534, 2018. 
Arndt, J. E., Schenke, H. W., Jakobsson, M., Nitsche, F. O., Buys, G., Goleby, B., Rebesco, M., Bohoyo, F., Hong, J., Black, J., Greku, R., Udintsev, G., Barrios, F., Reynoso-Peralta, W., Taisei, M., and Wigley, R.: The international bathymetric chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) version 1.0 – A new bathymetric compilation covering circum-Antarctic waters, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 3111–3117, https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50413, 2013. 
Bamber, J. L.: Ice sheet altimeter processing scheme, Int. J. Remote Sens., 15, 925–938, https://doi.org/10.1080/01431169408954125, 1994. 
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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.
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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