Basal melting and freezing of the Ross Ice Shelf

Abstract

Antarctica’s ice sheets don’t end at the coast, they extend onto the sea around the continent as ice shelves where they buttress the ice sheets from accelerating. These ice shelves are where most glaciological mass of the Antarctic continent is lost through calving and basal melting. But processes below the ice shelf are often poorly understood through lack of direct measurements. Automatic phase sensitive radar echo sounding (pRES) systems allow the internal ice shelf layers and sea interface to surveyed to mm precision allowing monitoring of the basal conditions and processes beneath the ice shelf. This report analyses third year pRES data from the eastern Ross Ice Shelf. Basal processes are consistent with precious measurements and can be related to basal topology and confirm other studies findings.