The Cryosphere

Ice shelf sensitivity and change

Principal Investigator: Wendy Lawson
Organisation: University of Canterbury

Ice shelves are potentially highly sensitive indicators of climate change, because they have a limit of thermal viability that, when exceeded, leads to their collapse.  The pattern of recent dramatic collapse of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula has been closely linked to the pattern of regional climate change in the last 50 years, and evidence indicates that collapse has occurred at other periods in Earth history that were not influenced by anthropogenic factors. However, a greater understanding of ice shelf response processes is required before their behaviour can accurately be interpreted in terms of external change.

The aim of this research is to continue an examination of ice shelf response processes by establishing the modern dynamics of the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The McMurdo Ice Shelf has been chosen as a generic site for systematic research into ice shelf response, and also as an ice shelf that is subject to local - as well as global - human impacts. In addition, the research fills an identified gap in knowledge that affects the understanding of interaction of ice between East and West Antarctica.