Micromechanics of sea ice frictional slip from test basin scale experiments.

We have conducted a series of high-resolution friction experiments on large floating saline ice floes in an environmental test basin. In these experiments, a central ice floe was pushed between two other floes, sliding along two interfacial faults. The frictional motion was predominantly stick-slip.

The effect of rock particles and D2O replacement on the flow behaviour of ice.

Ice-rock mixtures are found in a range of natural terrestrial and planetary environments. To understand how flow processes occur in these environments, laboratory-derived properties can be extrapolated to natural conditions through flow laws. Here, deformation experiments have been carried out on polycrystalline samples of pure ice, ice-rock and DO-ice-rock mixtures at temperatures of 263, 253 and 233 K, confining pressure of 0 and 48 MPa, rock fraction of 0-50 vol.

Marine ice regulates the future stability of a large Antarctic ice shelf.

The collapses of the Larsen A and B ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1995 and 2002 confirm the impact of southward-propagating climate warming in this region. Recent mass and dynamic changes of Larsen B's southern neighbour Larsen C, the fourth largest ice shelf in Antarctica, may herald a similar instability. Here, using a validated ice-shelf model run in diagnostic mode, constrained by satellite and in situ geophysical data, we identify the nature of this potential instability.

Evidence for seismogenic fracture of silicic magma.

It has long been assumed that seismogenic faulting is confined to cool, brittle rocks, with a temperature upper limit of approximately 600 degrees C (ref. 1). This thinking underpins our understanding of volcanic earthquakes, which are assumed to occur in cold rocks surrounding moving magma.