Rob Larter on Nostr: I agree that there is the potential for the WAIS to lose ice more quickly than the ...

I agree that there is the potential for the WAIS to lose ice more quickly than the Laurentide did if instabilities are triggered. Current whole ice sheet models don't show this, but there are a few processes that are not fully accounted for yet. There are still questions about the threshold for initiation of MICI and under what conditions it could be sustained, and recent studies have revealed that melting at the base of ice shelves is more complex and spatially variable than current parameterisations account for. Another important unknown is how the complex interactions between ice, glacial sediments, tidal instrusions of seawater and episodic discharge of subglacial melt affect basal drag in grounding zones.