Changing icescapes

Subjects

• Cryospheric science
• Physical oceanography

In 2010, a massive iceberg hit the Mertz Glacier Tongue in East Antarctica, causing it to calve. This event changed the icescape along this coast with important implications for the biological and physical processes occurring there.

The Antarctic land mass is surrounded by sea ice, which in winter can extend northwards for hundreds of kilometres. But the ice pack is not a continuous frozen icescape. Sea ice that forms along the Antarctic coast is driven offshore by strong winds that blow downhill from the Antarctic Plateau onto the shoreline, giving rise to an open water area known as a coastal polynya. Here, new ice is formed and again pushed away from the coast, making polynyas extremely efficient sea-ice factories.

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