Publications by authors named "Erin C Pettit"
Knowledge gaps about how the ocean melts Antarctica's ice shelves, borne from a lack of observations, lead to large uncertainties in sea level predictions. Using high-resolution maps of the underside of Dotson Ice Shelf, West Antarctica, we reveal the imprint that ice shelf basal melting leaves on the ice. Convection and intermittent warm water intrusions form widespread terraced features through slow melting in quiescent areas, while shear-driven turbulence rapidly melts smooth, eroded topographies in outflow areas, as well as enigmatic teardrop-shaped indentations that result from boundary-layer flow rotation.
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- Feedback loops between ice melt, glacier flow, and ocean circulation can significantly speed up ice loss at tidewater glaciers, impacting sea-level rise predictions.
- Current models of ice melt underestimate melting rates by not accounting for air bubbles trapped in glacier ice, which can lead to errors of 10-100 times compared to actual observations.
- Laboratory experiments reveal that the bursting of these pressurized bubbles enhances ice melt by introducing buoyancy and turbulence, suggesting that glaciers melt 2.25 times faster than bubble-free ice and improving the accuracy of global sea-level rise forecasts.