Totten Glacier Discussion

[FredBear]

Some early ice losses from a tongue just west of 120E in Wilkes Land on Worldview today?

[Stephan]

Well spotted, FredBear.
I am not familiar with the name of the glacier that is affected. This post (and FredBear's post) should go into a new thread.
A calving took place on Oct 10 at that ice shelf. It has a size of 7*34 km.
The remainders are circled in green on the second picture.
First picture is from Oct 02, second is from Oct 27. Size of the pictures are roughly 100*65 km, N is down right.

[gerontocrat]

Ice sheet mass loss in the Wilkes Basin since 2002 is the 4th highest in the 25 Antarctic basins  according to the GRACE/GRACE-FO data as analysed by GFZ. (the 3 highest are in in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet)

Also sea ice in the West Pacific Region (that includes the Wilkes Basin coast) is currently the lowest on this day in the 44 year satellite record. (Graph attached).

So much for the ice fortress of East Antarctica?

[oren]

I'm having trouble locating it, on my mobile.
Could it be Frost?

[FredBear]

Looks like Totten, a little above 120 E line & flowing from behind the bulge.
These maps are very useful, thanks.

[oren]

It's thanks to the thread you started (which I've now made sticky).

[paolo]

On the occasion of the recent calving (see posts in the thread "Antarctic Ice Sheet") I start this new thread
I remind you that the Totten Glacier is likely to be the sick one in East Antarctica and that it would be important to follow it

Here you will find an animation related to this calving that I think dates from October 09 (in the Sentinel1 EW image (low resolution) of 08 the calving has not yet taken place and that of 10 is after it)

All the images of the animation: maps and satellite images, are loaded on QGIS (I used Quantarctica as base)
Standard information added :
> latitude and longitude
> front and grounding lines provided by :
>> MEaSUREs Antarctic boundaries (in green; with data for the years 2007/2009)
>> USNIC_Antarctic Ice Shelf Data (yellow; from early 2019)
>> SCAR_ADD-Antarctic Digital Database (v7.3; orange; from early 2020)
And, not visible (overwritten by v7.3 as there has been no update in this sector)
>> SCAR_ADD-Antarctic Digital Database (v7.4; in red; from early 2021)
>> SCAR_ADD-Antarctic Digital Database (v7.5; in purple; from early 2022)

The images in the animation are :
> the PGC Antarctic map,
> the composite image of
>> the "Cape Peremennyy to Totten Glacier (Aviation Map)" map from AADC
>> the Sentinel1 IW image (high resolution) of 03/10/2022 (before calving)
> a first zoom (factor 4) of this same image
> a later zoom (factor 4) of the Sentinel1 IW image of 03/10/2022
> the Sentinel1 IW image of 15/10/2022 (after calving)
> Sentinel1 IW image of 27/10/2022
> Sentinel1 IW image of 13/10/2022 to which I have added information

This calving in itself is not extraordinary, but the last two years' calvings have significantly reduced the Tongue and the front has regressed significantly.

Large images (2000x1500) click to animate and click again to enlarge completely.

[oren]

Paolo thanks for starting this thread and for the animation which places the location within context and clearly shows the calving.
I took the liberty of moving the posts from the other thread here, they are bumped above the original post as sorting is by date.

[Stephan]

Thank you Paolo for starting this thread and thank you Oren to move the Totten Glacier related postings into this new thread.

[FredBear]

Not a lot has changed on the visible front to this glacier since the break-out reported in late October. Surface flow away from the glacier has tended to clear ice from the "active" front but the area is still protected more generally by surrounding pack ice at the moment.
Icebergs breaking off from Totten do not accumulate into long lasting "rafts" as appear at Thwaites but may help reinforce the local pack ice?

Totten is worth watching for changes as this area is suspected of being attacked by melt from deeper warm waters which could lead to rapid calving.