Active volcanism beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet and implications for ice-sheet stability
Abstract
Ice streams act to protect reservoirs of slowly moving inland ice from exposure to oceanic degradation, thus enhancing ice sheet stability. Aerogeophysical evidence is presented here for active volcanism and associated elevated heat flow beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet near the critical region where ice streaming begins. If this heat flow is controlling ice stream formation, then penetration of ocean water inland of the thin hot crust of the active portion of the West Antarctic rift system could lead to the disappearance of ice streams, and possibly trigger a collapse of the inland ice reservoir.
- Publication:
-
Nature
- Pub Date:
- February 1993
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 1993Natur.361..526B
- Keywords:
-
- Antarctic Regions;
- Climate Change;
- Ice Environments;
- Land Ice;
- Volcanoes;
- Glacial Drift;
- Ice Formation;
- Ice Mapping;
- Melting;
- Geophysics