Assessing the sensitivity of the Vanderford Glacier, East Antarctica, to basal melt and calving

Bird, Lawrence A.; McCormack, Felicity S.; Beckmann, Johanna; Jones, Richard S.; Mackintosh, Andrew N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-955-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-955-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-955-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

Research article

|

03 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 03 Mar 2025

Assessing the sensitivity of the Vanderford Glacier, East Antarctica, to basal melt and calving

Lawrence A. Bird, Felicity S. McCormack, Johanna Beckmann, Richard S. Jones, and Andrew N. Mackintosh

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-955-2025-supplement

Data sets

Supporting Data - Assessing the sensitivity of the Vanderford Glacier, East Antarctica, to basal melt and calving. Lawrence Bird https://doi.org/10.26180/26170102

Data and code for: “Annual mass budget of Antarctic ice shelves from 1997 to 2021” Benjamin Davison https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8052519

Deep Glacial Troughs and Stabilizing Ridges Unveiled beneath the Margins of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0756/versions/3) M. Morlighem et al. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0510-8

MEaSUREs ITS_LIVE Antarctic Quarterly 1920 m Ice Shelf Height Change and Basal Melt Rates, 1992-2017 F. S. Paolo et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/SE3XH9RXQWAM

Extensive and anomalous grounding line retreat at Vanderford Glacier, Vincennes Bay, Wilkes Land, East Antarctica (https://cryoportal.enveo.at/) Hannah J. Picton et al. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3593-2023

MEaSUREs InSAR-Based Antarctica Ice Velocity Map E. Rignot et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/D7GK8F5J8M8R

Model code and software

Antarctic Calving Loss Rivals Ice-Shelf Thinning (https://github.com/chadagreene/ice-shelf-geometry) Chad A. Greene et al. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05037-w

Short summary

Vanderford Glacier is the fastest-retreating glacier in East Antarctica and may have important implications for future ice loss from the Aurora Subglacial Basin. Our ice sheet model simulations suggest that grounding line retreat is driven by sub-ice-shelf basal melting, in which warm ocean waters melt ice close to the grounding line. We show that current estimates of basal melt are likely too low, highlighting the need for improved estimates and direct measurements of basal melt in the region.