This image shows the Totten Glacier ice shelf in East Antarctica
This image shows the Totten Glacier ice shelf in East Antarctica (the wrinkled white area at top left) on Sept. 25, 2013. Two large open-water polynyas appear on the sea ice below and to the right of the shelf, as well as several smaller ones. The open-water areas are bright black. The stippled diagonal line from lower left to upper right is the outer edge of the sea ice, with cloud cover to the right of that line. The image is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Credit: NASA.
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A new NASA-led study has discovered an intriguing link between sea ice conditions and the melting rate of Totten Glacier, the glacier in East Antarctica that discharges the most ice into the ocean. The discovery, involving cold, extra salty water - brine - that forms within openings in sea ice, adds to our understanding of how ice sheets interact with the ocean, and may improve our ability to forecast and prepare for future sea level rise.

"I was curious why Totten was changing so fast when the glacier just next to it wasn't changing much," said Ala Khazender of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the new study, published online Dec. 5 in the journal Nature Communications. Combining satellite observations with ocean numerical modeling, Khazender and his colleagues developed a hypothesis that reductions in the volume of brine would increase Totten's thinning and melting. Additional research supported that hypothesis.


Satellite observations from NASA's ICESat-1, which measures how much ice surfaces are rising or falling over time, revealed that Totten Glacier was thinning rapidly. It currently discharges enough ice into the surrounding ocean to fill Lake Erie in just over a week. The nearby Moscow University Glacier and its floating ice shelf were showing little change. Why the difference? "We were convinced that the answer must be in the ocean," Khazender said.

The ocean around Antarctica is warmer than both the continent's icy surface and the polar air. Ice shelves (the floating front edges of glaciers that extend tens to hundreds of miles offshore) melt more because of contact with ocean water below them than they do because of sunlight. Melting at the undersides of ice shelves is part of Antarctica's natural water cycle, but when glaciers start melting unusually quickly, it's a sign that something is off balance.




The researchers hypothesized that when the cold brine pooled under Totten Ice Shelf, it mixed with the water there, lowering its temperature and slowing the glacier's winter melt rate. If so, a reduction in cold brine would mean the glacier's winter melt rate would increase.


If there are more winters with reduced polynya extents, Khazender points out, the cavity under Totten can fill with warmer ocean water rather than cold brine. "If that happens, the glacier's flow could be significantly destabilized, causing it to discharge even more ice into the ocean," he said.



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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.