Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’

The filling and draining of meltwater lakes has been found to cause a floating Antarctic ice shelf to flex, potentially threatening its stability.

A team of British and American researchers, co-led by the University of Cambridge, has measured how much the McMurdo ice shelf in Antarctica flexes in response to the filling and draining of meltwater lakes on its surface. This type of flexing had been hypothesised before and simulated by computer models, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been measured in the field. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

The results demonstrate a link between surface melting and the weakening of Antarctic ice shelves and support the idea that recent ice shelf breakup around the Antarctic Peninsula may have been triggered, at least in part, by large amounts of surface meltwater produced in response to atmospheric warming.

As the climate continues to warm, more and more ice shelves may become susceptible to flex, fracture and break up over the coming century.

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