Melting of glacier ice enhanced by bursting air bubbles.

ABSTRACT: Feedbacks between ice melt, glacier flow and ocean circulation can rapidly accelerate ice loss at tidewater glaciers and alter projections of sea-level rise. At the core of these projections is a model for ice melt that neglects the fact that glacier ice contains pressurized bubbles of air due to its formation from compressed snow. Current model estimates can underpredict glacier melt at termini outside the region influenced by the subglacial discharge plume by a factor of 10-100 compared with observations. Here we use laboratory-scale experiments and theoretical arguments to show that the bursting of pressurized bubbles from glacier ice could be a source of this discrepancy. These bubbles eject air into the seawater, delivering additional buoyancy and impulses of turbulent kinetic energy

SUBMITTER: Wengrove ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10555835 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature