Marine ice in Larsen Ice Shelf

It is argued that Larsen Ice Shelf contains marine ice formed by oceanic freezing and other mechanisms. Missing basal returns in airborne radar soundings and observations of a smooth and healed surface coincide downstream of regions where an ocean model predicts freezing. Visible imagery suggests that marine ice currently stabilizes Larsen C Ice Shelf and implicates failure of marine flow bands in the 2002 Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. Ocean modeling indicates that any regime change towards the incursion of warmer Modified Weddell Deep Water into the Larsen C cavity could curtail basal freezing and its stabilizing influence. Citation: Holland, P. R., H. F. J. Corr, D. G. Vaughan, A. Jenkins, and P. Skvarca (2009), Marine ice in Larsen Ice Shelf, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L11604, doi: 10.1029/2009GL038162.