Satellite record reveals 1960s acceleration of Totten Ice Shelf in East Antarctica.

ABSTRACT: Wilkes Land and Totten Glacier (TG) in East Antarctica (EA) have been losing ice mass significantly since 1989. There is a lack of knowledge of long-term mass balance in the region which hinders the estimation of its contribution to global sea level rise. Here we show that this acceleration trend in TG has occurred since the 1960s. We reconstruct ice flow velocity fields of 1963-1989 in TG from the first-generation satellite images of ARGON and Landsat-1&4, and build a five decade-long record of ice dynamics. We find a persistent long-term ice discharge rate of 68 ± 1 Gt/y and an acceleration of 0.17 ± 0.02 Gt/y² from 1963 to 2018, making TG the greatest contributor to global sea level rise in EA. We attribute the long-term acceleration near grounding line from 1963 to 2018 to b

SUBMITTER: Li R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10333183 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature