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Large-scale geological structures have controlled the long-term development of the bed and thus the flow of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). However, complete ice cover has obscured the age and exact positions of faults and geological boundaries beneath Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier, two major WAIS outlets in the Amundsen Sea sector. Here, we characterize the only rock outcrop between these two glaciers, which was exposed by the retreat of slow-flowing coastal ice in the early 2010s to form the new Sif Island. The island comprises granite, zircon U-Pb dated to ~177–174 Ma and characterized by initial ɛ_Nd,⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and ɛ_Hfisotope compositions of -2.3, 0.7061 and -1.3, respectively. These characteristics resemble Thurston Island/Antarctic Peninsula crustal block rocks, strongly suggesting that the Sif Island granite belongs to this province and placing the crustal block's boundary with the Marie Byrd Land province under Thwaites Glacier or its eastern shear margin. Low-temperature thermochronological data reveal that the granite underwent rapid cooling following emplacement, rapidly cooled again at ~100–90 Ma and then remained close to the Earth's surface until present. These data help date vertical displacement across the major tectonic structure beneath Pine Island Glacier to the Late Cretaceous.

 

Understanding the recent history of Thwaites Glacier, and the processes controlling its ongoing retreat, is key to projecting Antarctic contributions to future sea-level rise. Of particular concern is how the glacier grounding zone might evolve over coming decades where it is stabilized by sea-floor bathymetric highs. Here we use geophysical data from an autonomous underwater vehicle deployed at the Thwaites Glacier ice front, to document the ocean-floor imprint of past retreat from a sea-bed promontory. We show patterns of back-stepping sedimentary ridges formed daily by a mechanism of tidal lifting and settling at the grounding line at a time when Thwaites Glacier was more advanced than it is today. Over a duration of 5.5 months, Thwaites grounding zone retreated at a rate of >2.1 km per year—twice the rate observed by satellite at the fastest retreating part of the grounding zone between 2011 and 2019. Our results suggest that sustained pulses of rapid retreat have occurred at Thwaites Glacier in the past two centuries. Similar rapid retreat pulses are likely to occur in the near future when the grounding zone migrates back off stabilizing high points on the sea floor.

 

Abstract. The geometry of the sea floor immediately beyondAntarctica's marine-terminating glaciers is a fundamental control onwarm-water routing, but it also describes former topographic pinning pointsthat have been important for ice-shelf buttressing. Unfortunately, thisinformation is often lacking due to the inaccessibility of these areas forsurvey, leading to modelled or interpolated bathymetries being used asboundary conditions in numerical modelling simulations. At Thwaites Glacier(TG) this critical data gap was addressed in 2019 during the first cruise ofthe International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) project. We present more than 2000 km2 of new multibeamecho-sounder (MBES) data acquired in exceptional sea-ice conditionsimmediately offshore TG, and we update existing bathymetric compilations.The cross-sectional areas of sea-floor troughs are under-predicted by up to40 % or are not resolved at all where MBES data are missing, suggesting thatcalculations of trough capacity, and thus oceanic heat flux, may besignificantly underestimated. Spatial variations in the morphology oftopographic highs, known to be former pinning points for the floating iceshelf of TG, indicate differences in bed composition that are supported bylandform evidence. We discuss links to ice dynamics for an overriding icemass including a potential positive feedback mechanism where erosion ofsoft erodible highs may lead to ice-shelf ungrounding even with littleor no ice thinning. Analyses of bed roughnesses and basal drag contributionsshow that the sea-floor bathymetry in front of TG is an analogue for extantbed areas. Ice flow over the sea-floor troughs and ridges would have beenaffected by similarly high basal drag to that acting at the grounding zonetoday. We conclude that more can certainly be gleaned from these 3Dbathymetric datasets regarding the likely spatial variability of bedroughness and bed composition types underneath TG. This work also addressesthe requirements of recent numerical ice-sheet and ocean modelling studiesthat have recognised the need for accurate and high-resolution bathymetry todetermine warm-water routing to the grounding zone and, ultimately, forpredicting glacier retreat behaviour. 

Major ice loss in the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is hypothesized to have triggered ice sheet collapses during past warm periods such as those in the Pliocene. International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 379 recovered continuous late Miocene to Holocene sediments from a sediment drift on the continental rise, allowing assessment of sedimentation processes in response to climate cycles and trends since the late Miocene. Via seismic correlation to the shelf, we interpret massive prograding sequences that extended the outer shelf by 80 km during the Pliocene through frequent advances of grounded ice. Buried grounding zone wedges indicate prolonged periods of ice‐sheet retreat, or even collapse, during an extended mid‐Pliocene warm period from ∼4.2–3.2 Ma inferred from Expedition 379 records. These results indicate that the WAIS was highly dynamic during the Pliocene and major retreat events may have occurred along the Amundsen Sea margin.