Surface meltwater ponding is potentially dangerous to ice shelves.
Antarctica’s northern George VI Ice Shelf experienced record melting during the 2019-2020 summer season compared to 31 previous summers of dramatically lower melt, a CU Boulder-led study found. The extreme melt coincided with record-setting stretches when local surface air temperatures were at or above the freezing point.
“During the 2019-2020 austral summer, we observed the most widespread melt and greatest total number of melt days of any season for the northern George VI Ice Shelf,” said CIRES Research Scientist Alison Banwell, lead author of the study published today in The Cryosphere.
Banwell and her co-authors—scientists at CU Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, NASA Goddard and international institutions—studied the 2019-2020 melt season on the northern George VI Ice Shelf using a variety of satellite observations that can detect meltwater on top of the ice and within the near-surface snow.
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