Researchers on board the British Antarctic Survey’s RRS James Clark Ross have captured a major calving event as the William Glacier disintegrated into a thousand small pieces before their very eyes. William Glacier lies on the Antarctic Peninsula.
While such events have long been known to trigger tsunamis at the surface of the ocean, the calving event when analyzed by the team revealed that the glacier calving can excite vigorous internal waves – a process that has been neglected in driving ocean mixing in computer models.
The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.
While the results have been released now, the event happened in 2020 when the team aboard the British Antarctic Survey’s RRS James Clark Ross research ship was taking ocean measurements off the Antarctic Peninsula. They watched the William Glacier disintegrate into a thousand small pieces before their very eyes.
The William Glacier typically has one or two large calving events a year. With the front of the glacier towering 40 m above sea level, the team estimated that this event broke off around 78,000 square meters of ice – around the area of 10 football pitches. Before the glacier front disintegrated, the ocean water at the depth of 50–100 m was cool but there was a warmer layer beneath this. After the calving, this changed dramatically, with the temperature much more even across different depths.
