Slush -- water-soaked snow -- makes up more than half of all meltwater on the Antarctic ice shelves during the height of summer, yet is poorly accounted for in regional climate models. The findings could have profound implications for ice shelf stability and sea level rise.
Slush -- water-soaked snow -- makes up more than half of all meltwater on the Antarctic ice shelves during the height of summer, yet is poorly accounted for in regional climate models.
The researchers also found that slush and pooled meltwater leads to 2.8 times more meltwater formation than predicted by standard climate models, since it absorbs more heat from the sun than ice or snow. The results, reported in the journalEach summer as the weather warms, water pools on the surfaces of Antarctica's floating ice shelves.
"Machine learning allows us to use more information from the satellite, since it can work with more wavelengths of light than the human eye can see," said Dell."This allows us to determine what is and isn't slush, and then we can train the machine learning model to quickly identify it across the whole continent."
"This slush has never been mapped on a large scale across all of Antarctica's large ice shelves, so over half of all surface meltwater has been ignored until now," said Dell."This is potentially significant for the hydrofracture process, where the weight of meltwater can create or enlarge fractures in the ice."
In addition to the potential implications of slush on hydrofracture, it also has a large effect on melt rates. Since slush and lakes are less white than snow or ice, they absorb more heat from the sun, causing more snowmelt. This extra melt is currently unaccounted for in climate models, which may lead to underestimates in projections of ice sheet melting and ice shelf stability.
The research was supported in part by the European Space Agency and the Natural Environment Research Council , part of UK Research and Innovation . Rebecca Dell is a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.Rebecca L. Dell, Ian C. Willis, Neil S. Arnold, Alison F. Banwell, Sophie de Roda Husman.New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. A 6.5-mile crack formed in 2012 over 5-and-a-half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter ...
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