Project: Collaborative Research: The Impact of Oceanic Forcing on the Melting of West Antarctic Peninsula Glaciers

NSF Award Abstract:
The Western Antarctic Peninsula is the fastest-warming region in the Southern Hemisphere and observations show widespread retreat of glaciers and ice sheets in this region over the 20th century. The Antarctic Peninsula is an area of growing importance internationally for scientific research, species and ecosystem conservation, tourism, shipping, and US national interests in Antarctica. The future melting of ice along the West Antarctic Peninsula is of importance to the regional freshwater budget, ocean circulation, and ecosystems in this biologically active region. Regional and global projections of sea level rise indicate the West Antarctic Peninsula must be included in decadal scale projections as the contribution to global sea level is at present equal in magnitude to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet component. This study will examine the role that the ocean is playing presently - and what role it might play in the future - in the melting of ice along the West Antarctic Peninsula.

This proposal aims to understand the impact of the ocean structure and dynamics on the melting of West Antarctic Peninsula glaciers using a combination of high-resolution models and historic data. The project focuses on (i) the importance that shelf circulation processes - driven for example by wind and buoyancy forcing and by the exchange with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and modulated by the complex bottom topography - have on the melting of glaciers, relative to that circulation driven by the melting glacier itself, (ii) the impact of the distinct differences in ocean properties and circulation dynamics along the coast, with particular emphasis in differences between Bransfield Strait and the shelf to the south, and (iii) the competition of wind- and buoyancy-modulated exchange between the open ocean and the shelf and the transport and mixing processes on the shelf in determining the vertical structure of the nearshore thermal forcing, and its impact on glacier melting.