Bathymetry of the Amundsen Sea Embayment

We employ airborne gravity data from NASA's Operation IceBridge
collected in 2009–2014 to infer the bathymetry of sub–ice shelf cavities
in front of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers, West
Antarctica. We use a three‐dimensional inversion constrained by multibeam
echo sounding data offshore and bed topography from a mass conservation
reconstruction on land. The seamless bed elevation data refine details of
the Pine Island sub–ice shelf cavity, a slightly thinner cavity beneath
Thwaites, and previously unknown deep (>1200 m) channels
beneath the Crosson and Dotson ice shelves that shallow (500 m
and 750 m, respectively) near the ice shelf fronts. These sub–ice
shelf channels define the natural pathways for warm, circumpolar deep
water to reach the glacier grounding lines, melt the ice shelves from
below, and constrain the pattern of past and future glacial retreat.
Millan, R., E. Rignot, V. Bernier, M.
Morlighem, and P. Dutrieux (2017), Bathymetry of the
Amundsen Sea Embayment sector of West Antarctica from Operation IceBridge
gravity and other data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 44,
1360–1368, doi:10.1002/2016GL072071.