Journal
SCIENCE ADVANCES
Volume 2, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601610
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Funding
- Australian Antarctic Research Program
- Australian Research Council's Special Research Initiative for the Antarctic Gateway Partnership
- Australian Climate Change Science Program
- Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System
- Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centre program through the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO)
- Australian Government
- CSIRO
- University of Tasmania
- NSF [PLR-0733025, PLR-1143843]
- NASA [NNG10HPO6C, NNX11AD33G]
- Australian Antarctic Division [3013, 4077]
- G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation
- Jackson School of Geosciences
- NASA [NNX11AD33G, 148741] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Mass loss from the West Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers has been linked to basal melt by ocean heat flux. The Totten Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, which buttresses a marine-based ice sheet with a volume equivalent to at least 3.5 m of global sea-level rise, also experiences rapid basal melt, but the role of ocean forcing was not known because of a lack of observations near the ice shelf. Observations from the Totten calving front confirm that (0.22 +/- 0.07) x 10(6) m(3) s(-1) of warm water enters the cavity through a newly discovered deep channel. The ocean heat transport into the cavity is sufficient to support the large basal melt rates inferred from glaciological observations. Change in ocean heat flux is a plausible physical mechanism to explain past and projected changes in this sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to sea level.
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