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Glacial deposits could help to protect against sea-level rise.
Antarctic ice is protected from the sea by rocky wedges of debris that act as 'sandbags' to protect glaciers from rising waters, a survey of one of the continent's major ice flows has revealed. If much of Antarctica's ice is protected in this way, it may help to fend off ice melting as a result of rising sea levels.
Researchers led by Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, conducted a radar survey of the final 25 kilometres of the Whillans Ice Stream, a 500-kilometre-long glacier that sprawls towards the Ross Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. They focused on the 'grounding line' — the region where the ice stops flowing over land and passes out onto the floating ice shelf. Underneath this grounding line they found a pile of debris up to 31 metres thick, on top of which is a 10-metre-thick bulge of ice.
