Overview
- A peer-reviewed Nature Communications study finds that narrow channels beneath East Antarctica’s Fimbulisen Ice Shelf trap warmer seawater and boost local melt by about tenfold.
- Even small pulses of warmer deep water intensify melting inside these grooves, which can enlarge the channels and weaken the shelf’s buttressing of inland ice.
- Researchers combined detailed maps of the ice-shelf underside with high-resolution ocean-cavity simulations to compare smooth bases with channeled ones under cooler and slightly warmer seas.
- The authors warn that most climate and ice-sheet models do not resolve such narrow features, which could cause underestimates of East Antarctica’s sensitivity and its share of future sea-level rise.
- A separate Nature Geoscience paper reports that meltwater can reshape ocean layers to either amplify or briefly shield basal melting in different regions, highlighting feedbacks many projections still omit.