Abstract
Significance This study describes measurements of the ocean beneath the center of the Ross Ice Shelf, the Earth’s largest ice shelf. Ice shelves experience melting from below by the ocean and so are vulnerable to a warming climate system. We present the second dataset ever collected from this region, the first having been gathered 40 y prior. Our data provide a basis for better understanding the complex processes that drive melting. They illustrate the degree of variability in the mid-water column, a region largely ignored in modeling. We also observed ephemeral refreezing on the ice shelf underside, with implications for both melt rate and upper ocean dynamics. This insight emphasizes the importance of in situ observations in undersampled environments.
The stability of large Antarctic ice shelves has important implications for global sea level, sea ice area, and ocean circulation. A significant proportion of ice mass loss from these ice shelves is through ocean-driven melting which is controlled by largely unobserved oceanic thermodynamic and circulatory processes in the cavity beneath the ice shelf. Here we use direct measurements to provide evidence of the changing water column structure in the cavity beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the planet’s largest ice shelf by area. The cavity water column data exhibit both basal and benthic boundary layers, along with evidence of tidally modulated and diffusively convecting internal mixing processes. A region of thermohaline interleaving in the upper–middle water column indicates elevated diffusion and the potential to modify the cavity circulation. The measurements were recorded using the Aotearoa New Zealand Ross Ice Shelf Program hot water drill borehole melted in the central region of the shelf in December 2017 (HWD2), only the second borehole through the central region of the ice shelf, following J9 in 1977. These data, and comparison with the 1977 data, provide valuable insight into ice shelf cavity circulation and aid understanding of the evolution of the presently stable Ross Ice Shelf.