Sentences with phrase «ice shelves act»

The ice shelves act as giant buffers, slowing the flow of glaciers from the frozen land behind them.

These floating ice shelves act like a cork in a bottle, limiting how quickly the streams flow.

The ice shelves act like corks in a wine bottle, keeping the flow of ice behind them from reaching the sea, Hellmer said.

Ice shelves act hold back glaciers from the sea and keep warmer marine air at a distance from the glaciers.

A full explanation will require numerical modeling of glacier flow, but observations to date suggest that ice shelves act as «braking» systems on the glaciers behind them.

However, as Timothy explained in # 121, in addition to the direct sea level rise that occurs when ice shelves melt, there is a much larger secondary effect, in that ice shelves act as a brake, greatly reducing the rate of flow of the glaciers behind them from the land to the sea; and when ice shelves melt, the rate of glacier flow increases quite rapidly.

Antarctica's ice shelves act as doorstops that hold back glaciers and the continent's vast stores of land ice.

Since ice shelves act like plugs, removing them lets inland glaciers flow faster into the ocean, and that will raise sea levels.

An ice shelf acts like a cork bottling up the glaciers feeding it.

Not exact matches

The shelves act as a buttress to the «grounded» ice, helping slow the flow of the ice sheet's glaciers into the ocean.

It's difficult because there are not enough measurements available on either the forces acting on the rift or the composition of the ice shelf.

For decades beforehand, researchers had debated the extent to which ice shelves buttress glaciers on land — acting like corks that slow the land ice's inevitable march to the sea.

But an ice shelf is thought to act as a «cork in the bottle,» damming the flow of the land - based glacier that slowly feeds the shelf in the sea.

Its floating front edge, the Totten ice shelf, sticks out like a tongue over the water and acts as a buttress for the giant glacier, slowing its movement toward the ocean.

According to the Australian Antarctic Division, the ice «acts like a belt around the Antarctic coast, regulating the flow of ice shelves and glaciers into the sea.»

These channels, however, are blocked by ice shelves, which act like a cork, keeping back the ice and helping to maintain the stability of the glaciers.

Larsen B glaciers are too small to significantly affect sea level, but the processes that acted on this area could play out on other, bigger ice shelves.

New research, which includes using data from satellites such as ESA's heritage Envisat, has revealed that there is a critical point where these shelves act as a safety band, holding back the ice that flows towards the sea.

Trusel's study is the first to comprehensively study the sensitivity of warming air temperature on the stability of ice shelves in Antarctica, which are the floating extensions of glaciers and act to constrain the glaciers» speed.

New research, using ice velocity data from satellites such as ESA's heritage Envisat, has revealed that there is a critical point where these shelves act as a safety band, holding back the ice that flows t...

The continent is flanked by 54 major ice shelves, which act as brakes slowing the movement of ice in land - based glaciers out to sea.

Two new studies of different ice shelves — tongues of ice that essentially act as bathtub plugs — have seen major melting that could portend a less stable future for the region.

During an interval when sea level is forced upward from a major low stand by a Milankovitch response acting either alone or in combination with an internally driven, higher - frequency process, ice sheets grounded on continental shelves become unstable, mass wasting accelerates, and the resulting deglaciation sets the phase of one wave in the train of 100,000 - year oscillations.