Articles | Volume 17, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-4079-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Modes of Antarctic tidal grounding line migration revealed by Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) laser altimetry
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- Final revised paper (published on 26 Sep 2023)
- Preprint (discussion started on 24 Feb 2023)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
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RC1: 'Comment on tc-2022-265', Pietro Milillo, 09 Mar 2023
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Bryony Freer, 18 May 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on tc-2022-265', Kasia Warburton, 13 Mar 2023
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Bryony Freer, 18 May 2023
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RC3: 'Comment on tc-2022-265', Tian Li, 19 Mar 2023
- AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Bryony Freer, 18 May 2023
Peer review completion
AR – Author's response | RR – Referee report | ED – Editor decision | EF – Editorial file upload
ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (25 May 2023) by Bert Wouters
AR by Bryony Freer on behalf of the Authors (15 Jun 2023)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
Manuscript
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Jun 2023) by Bert Wouters
RR by Tian Li (09 Jul 2023)
ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (09 Jul 2023) by Bert Wouters
AR by Bryony Freer on behalf of the Authors (09 Aug 2023)
Manuscript
This article discusses the development and application of a technique using ICESat-2 repeat-track laser altimetry to locate the inland limit of tidal ice shelf flexure and resolve the magnitude and temporal variability of tidal grounding line (GL) migration in Antarctica. The authors apply this technique to an ice plain north of Bungenstockrücken, in a region of the southern Ronne Ice Shelf subject to large ocean tides. They observe a 1,300 km2 area of ephemeral grounding over which the GL migrates by up to 15 km between low and high tide and identify four distinct modes of migration: “linear”, “asymmetric”, “threshold” and “hysteresis”. The short-term movement of the GL dominates any long-term migration signal in this location, and the distribution of GL positions and modes contains information about spatial variability in the ice-bed interface. The authors identify four distinct modes of GL migration: linear, asymmetric, threshold and hysteresis. I was surprised when reading about linear and threshold behaviors they did not mention recent well-known studies confirming these results (i.e. Milillo et al 2022 for linear behavior and Milillo et al 2019 for threshold behavior over the Thwaites Cavity). The authors recommend that these observations can be used to validate models of tidal ice shelf flexure, GL migration, and subglacial hydrology at the grounding zone (GZ). They find a 14 km grounding zone that could be explained with the Stubblefield et al 2021 Model. However, I haven’t found any reference to this paper in the manuscript. The study concludes with recommendations for future work, including the need for timestamped measurements of GL position accompanied by tide height and phase, continent-wide analysis of tidal GL migration, and improved representation of GL migration behavior in ice sheet models.
The paper is well written, well organized and provides significant results. I encourage the editor to accept this manuscript after few minor revisions.
I believe the authors could further improve the manuscript by referring the aforementioned literature studies as a further independent confirmation of the validity of their findings.
Milillo, P., Rignot, E., Rizzoli, P., Scheuchl, B., Mouginot, J., Bueso-Bello, J. L., ... & Dini, L. (2022). Rapid glacier retreat rates observed in West Antarctica. Nature Geoscience, 15(1), 48-53.
Milillo, P., Rignot, E., Rizzoli, P., Scheuchl, B., Mouginot, J., Bueso-Bello, J., & Prats-Iraola, P. (2019). Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. Science advances, 5(1), eaau3433.
Stubblefield, A. G., Spiegelman, M., & Creyts, T. T. (2021). Variational formulation of marine ice-sheet and subglacial-lake grounding-line dynamics. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 919, A23.