Ice-Shelf Rumpling and its Influence on Ice-Shelf Buttressing Processes

Ice shelves — the floating extensions of Antarctica’s ice sheet — act as critical barriers that slow the flow of grounded ice into the ocean. This buttressing effect is essential for the stability of the ice sheet, which in turn slows global sea level rise. Many ice shelves are thinning as the climate warms, making them less stable and more vulnerable to collapse, though processes influenced by the local environment also play an important role.

At our field site on the edge of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, the ice is under compression as it flows toward land. This causes the ice shelf to crumple into “rumples” or wave-like features. In some cases, the glacier ice within these rumples can buckle and fracture. Our project aims to understand how these rumples evolve and how they influence overall ice-shelf stability and buttressing of the upstream Ross Ice Sheet.