Ruppert & Saunders Coasts

[paolo]

Following the discovery of the Land Glacier Tongue breakup I am starting this thread to deal with everything to do with the Ruppert Coast and Saunders Coast, which includes, among others, the Nickerson Ice Shelf and the Sulzberger Ice Shelf. This area is between the Getz Ice Shelf and the Ross Ice Shelf.
The first image is a map of the area and the second is a zoom on the Land Glacier Tongue.
The following animation, built from the S1 images of 18/02/2022 and today (1px =50m; overall dimensions 70x58 km) shows the break-up of the Tongue, cut almost at the base, as well as the break-up of the mélange of icebergs and fast ice to the east (to its left in the image)

Click twice to animate and enlarge completely

[FredBear]

The Land Glacier and nearby ice has been retreating during the past month. Icebergs and old shelf ice are drifting further away from the coast even as the surface of the sea is freezing. The glacier tongue has retreated further behind the marked boundary on Worldview than last year.

[sidd]

Thanks for keeping an eye on these.

sidd

[Often Distant]

Winter sea ice not very fast or fast.

[Often Distant]

An animation from November 2017 to current. Early years are single frames at 360, and recent years are 12 frames at 30, roughly equaled time lapse. Land Glacier is to the right. Nickerson Ice Shelf spans west to the left, which is largely constrained by shallow bathymetry and island mass. Toward Newman Island, and at Groves Island, there is calving potential in the near future. Ice bergs ground and grind across the frontal ocean which is largely shallower than the inner depths below the ice shelf. Deep channels extend inland beneath high elevation continental sheet ice. Openings widen for underflow.

Seasonal sea ice can remain fasted for multiple years. Ice has held fast for about 6 months, retaining much of the separated tongue melange within the vicinity, though it is holding no restraint on the velocity of Land Glacier.