Sentences with phrase «wais glacier»
This article is an examination of observation of rapid changes of a significant WAIS glacier, and the implications for this glacier.
http://www.realclimate.org/ Not exact matches
The WAIS is of great interest to researchers as two of its largest glaciers, Thwaites and Pine Island, are draining into the sea and contributing to sea - level rise.
That information will feed into models that tell us how the WAIS will fare in the next 100 years and whether its glaciers are capable of a massive speedup, as some people fear.
That is because they are the only main outlet glaciers of WAIS not buttressed by very large ice shelves.
Image credit: Anna McKee, WAIS Reliquary: 68,000 Years, (detail), 2013 - 15, include silk, glass, glacier water, wood frame, 22» x 14.5» x 9»
It is well known that ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula have collapsed on several occasions in the last couple of decades, that ice shelves in West Antarctica are thinning rapidly, and that the large outlet glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) are accelerating.
It's not the last word, as Gavin notes, but further refinements (which could be higher or lower than 2m by 2100) await more science at both GIS and WAIS, glacier physics, and more comprehensive glacier modeling, which simply requires more time.
Lower Atmosphere is warming, oceans upper layers are warming, arctic summer sea ice is disappearing, WAIS and Greenland are both losing mass annually and the majority of the earths glaciers are losing mass too.
The observed acceleration, retreat of the grounding line, thinning of the lower section of the glacier and the observed elevation of the basal topography provide no indication that this is not a weak underbelly of WAIS.
These are the only two significant outlet glaciers draining the north side of the WAIS.
I was right to state that the WAIS is different from the GIS and EAIS: the WAIS meets the sea in the R&R ice shelves, the GIS only feeds the sea through glaciers.
SLR by 2100 is more likely to come from ice mass loss from West Antarctica (WAIS) where warm ocean currents are already melting ice at glacier mouths and attacking areas of the WAIS resting on the seabed.
Nor is it completely certain that the loss of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers would lead to full WAIS destabilization.
The Cosgrove Ice Shelf doesn't provide major drainage today for WAIS as it did earlier in the Holocene epoch, but it still has lessons to teach scientists about how outlet glaciers can react when exposed to warmer deep water, she added.
A similar behaviour might be occurring on the Amundsen Sea sector of the west Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), where Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers have lost significant portions of their fringing ice shelves, and show signs of recent acceleration.
Concern is raised by recent inferences from gravity measurements that the WAIS is losing mass (39), and observations that glaciers draining into the Amundsen Sea are losing 60 % more ice than they are gaining and hence contributing to sea - level rise (40).