Tag Archives: Amundsen Sea Embayment

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I was interested in how long the polynya I blogged about yesterday had existed.

I made a gif of the previous months sea ice data.

The sea ice extent in Pine Island Bay 11 September to 10 October 2016. Data from DMSP SSMI. The development of the polynya can be seen in the development of the dark regions.
The sea ice extent in Pine Island Bay 11 September to 10 October 2016. Data from DMSP SSMI. The development of the polynya can be seen in the growth of the dark regions.

You can see that the polynya in the centre of the picture can be seen from the very beginning. This is forming in front of the Dotson Ice Shelf  - and from the scale bar you can see it is big. This polynya really starts to develop as open water around 5 October 2016.

The coastal polynya on the northern land boundary appear in mid September - and develop throughout the record.

The image below was in my previous post and it shows the three polynya from a MODIS image on 9 October 2016.

The MODIS imagery 9 October 2016 from the TERRA satellite overlain in Google Earth
The MODIS imagery 9 October 2016 from the TERRA satellite overlain in Google Earth

Next diversion will be a area of open water / time plot.

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-- UPDATED 11 June 2014 --

This post got the dreaded TL; DR on Reddit - but at least "they" acknowledged it was useful. Since it takes someone else to pick out the value in your work I offer this tweet from Jason Major.

@JPMajor tweet

- ORIGINAL POST

A significant area of Antarctic glaciological interest is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and where it discharges into the Amundsen Sea Embayment.

Amundsen Sea Embayment
Amundsen Sea Embayment: Source Wikipedia

It is a research focus (e.g. iSTAR) because it is the region where the glacier ice is melting very rapidly.

A great research article by Dustin Schroeder (The University of Texas at Austin) has just been published in PNAS which presents evidence for the geothermal heat flux beneath the Thwaites Glacier.

Title page of Schroeder et al 2014

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