The next Living Planet Symposium (https://lps25.esa.int), will be held from 23-27 June 2025 in Vienna with an abstract submission deadline of 1st December 2024.
In the spirit of INSTANT, Fausto Ferraccioli, Rene Forsberg, and Jörg Ebbing are organising a session and hope that you consider sending an abstract for it.
Subglacial conditions are a contributing factor to ice sheet dynamics as bedrock properties control basal gliding. However, knowledge of the Solid Earth-Ice (and Ocean) interface comes with large uncertainties. That relates to the margins of the ice sheets, where topography margin is critical for accurate estimates of current Antarctic ice discharge, while bathymetry under ice shelves, bed topography along major outlet glaciers, and geology and subglacial hydrology near the coast are critical factors for predicting the future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Additionally, constraining bathymetry under ice shelves is critical to determine their response to ocean forcing, including the incursion of warmer Circumpolar Deep Water.
Bedrock properties also affect the interior of the ice-sheet and here geothermal heat flow is a key parameter, underdetermined both in Greenland and Antarctica. This relates to the thermal and mechanical structure of the solid earth, which exerts a primary control on the response of the polar regions to ice mass changes. Glacial Isostatic Adjustment of the bedrock beneath the ice sheets affects the bed slope of the ice sheet and the grounding line of marine-terminating outlet glaciers. Satellite data are essential in monitoring the current conditions and for understanding the feedbacks in order to predict the future evolution of the Polar Regions.