Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf cavity observations reveal multiyear sea ice dynamics and deepwater warming in Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica

Abstract

Pine Island Bay (PIB), situated in the Amundsen Sea, is renowned for its retreating ice shelves and highly variable sea ice. While brine rejection from sea ice formation and glacial meltwater influence seawater properties, the downstream impacts beneath the region's floating ice shelves remain poorly understood. Here, we exploit an unprecedented multiyear (2020–2023) oceanographic time series from instruments deployed through boreholes beneath the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS), immediately downstream of PIB, offering new insight into how ice–ocean–atmosphere interactions in PIB shape oceanographic conditions within the subshelf cavity. Our observations reveal a sustained warming and thickening of the modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW) layer near the seabed since January 2020, critical in a region where mCDW drives basal melting beneath West Antarctica's most vulnerable outlet glaciers. Concurrently, the retreat of the multiyear sea ice edge by over 150 km across most of PIB has enhanced the advection of Winter Water, contributing to a cooling of more than 1 °C in the upper 250 m beneath TEIS between July 2021 and January 2023. Superimposed on these trends are episodic temperature and salinity anomalies lasting several weeks, originating in PIB and advecting past the moorings. These events link mobile sea ice cover to subshelf hydrography, as mid-depth waters temporarily warm and increase in salinity, leading to an increase in density, while deeper mCDW simultaneously cools and freshens, reducing its density. Overall, these changes are associated with reduced stratification in the cavity. As sea ice continues to decline in a warming Antarctic climate, our results offer a glimpse into how ocean circulation and basal melting may evolve across the Amundsen Sea Embayment. This dataset provides a critical benchmark for refining process-based models and improving melt rate parameterizations in coupled ice–ocean simulations.

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