Rapid, buoyancy-driven ice-sheet retreat of hundreds of metres per day

Rates of ice-sheet grounding-line retreat can be quantified from the spacing of corrugation ridges on deglaciated regions of the seafloor(1,2), providing a long-term context for the approximately 50-year satellite record of ice-sheet change(3-5). However, the few existing examples of these landforms are restricted to small areas of the seafloor, limiting our understanding of future rates of grounding-line retreat and, hence, sea-level rise. Here we use bathymetric data to map more than 7,600 corrugation ridges across 30,000 km(2) of the mid-Norwegian shelf. The spacing of the ridges shows that pulses of rapid grounding-line retreat, at rates ranging from 55 to 610 m day(-1), occurred across low-gradient (+/- 1 degrees) ice-sheet beds during the last deglaciation. These values far exceed all previously reported rates of grounding-line retreat across the satellite(3,4,6,7) and marine-geological(1,2) records. The highest retreat rates were measured across the flattest areas of the former bed, suggesting that near-instantaneous ice-sheet ungrounding and retreat can occur where the grounding line approaches full buoyancy. Hydrostatic principles show that pulses of similarly rapid grounding-line retreat could occur across low-gradient Antarctic ice-sheet beds even under present-day climatic forcing. Ultimately, our results highlight the often-overlooked vulnerability of flat-bedded areas of ice sheets to pulses of extremely rapid, buoyancy-driven retreat.

Automated summary

Rates of ice-sheet grounding-line retreat can be measured from the spacing of corrugation ridges on the seafloor, providing context for ice-sheet change. However, limited examples restrict our understanding of future retreat rates and sea-level rise.