Scientists have good estimates of the place the retreating grounding line is, due to satellites anticipating tiny modifications within the ice’s elevation. But they haven’t had image of what the glacier’s stomach seems like on the grounding line, as a result of it’s beneath hundreds of ft of ice. “These data are really exciting because we’re getting a look into a hidden system,” says University of Waterloo glaciologist Christine Dow, who research Antarctic glaciers however wasn’t concerned within the analysis. 

With Icefin, the researchers might remotely pilot a digicam whereas measuring the salinity, temperature, and oxygen content material of the water. “We saw that the ice base itself was very complex in its topography, so there’s lots of staircases, terraces, rifts, and crevasses,” says British Antarctic Survey bodily oceanographer Peter Davis, the lead creator of one of many papers and coauthor on the opposite. “The rate of melting on different surfaces was very different.”

Where the glacier’s underside (or basal ice, within the scientific parlance) is smoother, melting is certainly taking place, however at a a lot slower charge than the place the topography is jagged. That’s as a result of a layer of chilly water rests the place the ice is flat, insulating it from hotter ocean water like a liquid blanket. But the place the topography is sloped and irregular, there are extra vertical surfaces the place heat water can assault the ice, together with making incursions from the aspect. This melting creates a peculiar “scalloped” look, just like the floor of a golf ball. 

These complicated, increasing basal options might then affect the remainder of the ice. “If you open up features underneath the ice, you also get similar reflections of them on the surface, because of the way that the ice is floating,” says Davis. “So there’s a fear that if you’re widening these rifts and crevices under the ice, you can destabilize the ice shelf, which could lead to greater disintegration over time.”