Physical Society Colloquium

Ice Sheet - Sea Level - Solid Earth Interactions in Antarctica

Natalya Gomez

Earth and Planetary Sciences
McGill University

Marine sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet are prone to unstable retreat in a warming climate. Observation and modeling-based studies suggest that these sectors have collapsed in the past and have the potential to contribute significantly to sea-level change in coming centuries, but the extent and timing of collapse remains uncertain. Constraining ice cover changes in Antarctica is challenging because the solid Earth, water and ice systems are strongly linked, and modern measurements of these systems contain a large signal from past ice mass changes. Furthermore, Earth structure beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet is characterized by significant lateral variability. This talk will focus on the physics of sea-level changes and solid Earth deformation following variations in the distribution of grounded ice, and the influence of these changes on the past and future stability and dynamics of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.