Scientists have estimated precisely where the receding ground line is thanks to satellites monitoring small changes in ice height. But they didn’t have a good picture of what a glacier belly is. It seems With a ground wire because it’s under thousands of feet of ice. Christine Dow, a glaciologist at the University of Waterloo who studies Antarctic glaciers but was not involved in the study, said:
Video: ITGC/Schmidt/Washam
Icefin allowed researchers to operate cameras remotely while measuring salinity, temperature and oxygen content in water. “We found the topography of the ice bed itself to be very complex, with many steps, terraces, fissures and crevasses,” says physical oceanographer Peter Davis of the British Antarctic Survey. other. “The melting rates on different surfaces were very different.”
Where the glacier’s underside (or basal ice in scientific terms) is smoother, melting is certainly occurring, but at a much slower rate than where the terrain is jagged. This is because ice has a layer of cold water on its flat surface, insulating it from warm seawater like a liquid blanket. However, where the terrain is sloping and irregular, there are more vertical surfaces where warm water can attack the ice, such as encroaching from the sides. Appearance is created.
These complex and expanding basal features can influence the rest of the ice. “If you open up features under the ice, you get similar reflections on the surface because of the way the ice floats,” Davis says. “Therefore, there is concern that widening these fissures and fissures under the ice could destabilize the ice shelf and lead to greater collapse over time.”
