"If the ice sheet thins or retreats, these topographically-controlled corridors could facilitate enhanced flow of ice further inland, and could lead to the West Antarctic
ice divide moving.
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), and his team found temperatures from aAe'92 to aAe'94 degrees Celsius (aAe'134 to aAe'137 degrees Fahrenheit) in a 1,000-kilometer long swath on the highest section of the East Antarctic
ice divide. The measurements were made between 2003 and 2013 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on board NASA's Aqua satellite and during the 2013 Southern Hemisphere winter by Landsat 8, a new satellite launched early this year by NASA and the U.S.
The multi-year WAIS Divide project is examining approximately the last 100,000 years of the Earth's climate history by drilling and recovering a deep ice core from the
ice divide in central West Antarctica.
The topographic high detected with both gravity and RES techniques controls the ice divide location (Fisher, 1979).
In some areas (southeast, northeast), the regions of fast flow extend almost to the ice divides (and may be causing ice divide migration), while in others (southwest), they stop well short of the divides.
9); however, this pattern is biased, since measurements were taken only near the main ice divide in western regions of the ice cap, and not near the major outlet glaciers (Colgan et al., 2008).
Repeat kinematic differential GPS measurements made along an east-west transect across the main north-south ice divide in the southeast region of the ice cap (Fig.
Remote sensing has expanded knowledge of ice cap behaviour from field measurements in the northwest sector of the icecap to both the southwest and northeast sectors, as well as to the region around the north/ south ice divide in the southeast sector.
(1999) show a different late-glacial ice sheet configuration that indicate an ice flow from a U-shaped
ice divide centred over the central part of the peninsula.
"Beside the large ice sheet, there are thousands of peripheral glaciers which are not connected to the ice sheet or can be separated from it due to the existence of
ice divides. The area of those glaciers is about 50 times higher than the ice cover of the European Alps.
1 and 2) and New Brunswick, ii) the style of deglaciation of Newfoundland, with the Avalon Peninsula first, followed by a sudden collapse of central Newfoundland, iii) early deglaciation of summits, followed by delayed deglaciation in areas that had thicker ice, and (iv) cold-based ice in areas of thin ice or under
ice divides, wet-based more erosive ice under areas of rapid flow or thicker ice.
"We think that the binding [of the antifreeze] to the
ice divides the growth steps into many small steps that become highly curved," says DeVries.