Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have reported significant ice loss from Berry Glacier, a tributary of the Getz Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. According to a study published in Nature Communications, the glacier retreated by 18 kilometers (about 11 miles) between 1996 and 2023, averaging seven-tenths of a kilometer per year.
The research team found that Berry Glacier thinned by an average of 11 meters annually during this period. The retreat velocity increased by 64 percent, resulting in a total loss of 130 gigatons of ice mass. These findings were based on synthetic-aperture radar interferometry data collected from multiple satellite missions such as ERS-1/2, ALOS-1/2 PALSAR, Sentinel-1, COSMO-SkyMed and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission.
“From these data it is clear that the rapid retreat of Berry Glacier can be attributed to the intrusion of warm circumpolar deep water beneath the ice,” said lead author Hanning Chen, UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science. “The bathymetry, or topography of the Earth’s surface, underneath Berry Glacier facilitates the injection of seawater of a temperature sufficient to rapidly melt basal ice, and the result an alarming reduction in ice mass in this vulnerable region of West Antarctica.”
The Getz Ice Shelf holds enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by about 22 centimeters (nearly nine inches), with Berry Glacier responsible for approximately ten percent of its drainage.
“Berry Glacier isn’t an outlier,” said Chen. “Where warm seawater can intrude beneath glaciers sitting on retrograde beds, intense basal melting is likely. Accounting for these intrusions in ice-sheet models will likely raise projections of ice loss and sea-level rise.”
Eric Rignot, UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of Earth system science and co-author on the study, highlighted how satellite technology allowed researchers to identify grounding lines—where glaciers leave land and begin floating—and grounding zones that shift with tidal changes.
Radar interferometry has advanced to provide measurements accurate within five to ten centimeters. “This change in elevation is from the flexing of huge slabs of ice, a process that enables warm water to reach the undersides of glaciers to cause aggressive melting,” Rignot said.
Other contributors included Bernd Scheuchl, Ratnakar Gadi, Enrico Ciraci and Jae Hun Kim from UC Irvine; Mathieu Morlighem from Dartmouth College; Pietro Melillo from University of Houston; and Luigi Dini from the Italian Space Agency.
UC Irvine was founded in 1965 and is part of the Association of American Universities. It ranks among America’s top public universities according to U.S. News & World Report and has produced five Nobel laureates. The university enrolls more than 36,000 students across 224 degree programs and contributes significantly to Orange County’s economy. More information can be found at www.uci.edu.
For media inquiries or access to campus studios for interviews with faculty experts using Comrex IP audio codec equipment (subject to availability), journalists may refer to https://news.uci.edu/media-resources/.
