First-year land-fast Antarctic sea ice as an archive of ice shelf meltwater fluxes

Cold Regions Science and Technology (2015)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2015.01.007

Ocean δ18O values near the McMurdo Ice Shelf were reconstructed using observational data from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, by combining a recently revised version of an isotope fractionation model with an established thermodynamic sea ice model.

We found that the range of sea ice effective fractionation coefficients derived for oxygen-18 was + 1.84 ‰ to + 2.21 ‰. The method is an improvement on previous approaches; uncertainty in reconstructed δ18O was ± 0.2 ‰.

However, the method is of limited utility to detect ice shelf melt due to reconstruction uncertainty. The heat flux parameterisation requirement means that the method cannot be entirely retrospective.