Nadine Steiger

Ice shelves—floating extensions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet—are threatened by increasing subglacial melt. Their break-off causes destabilization and acceleration of the Ice Sheet, leading to sea level rise.

Relatively warm water that leads to subglacial melt originates from Circumpolar Deep Water that crosses the continental shelf and the ice shelf front to enter subglacial cavities. My PhD focuses on the control of these topographic barriers on the path of warm water into the cavities. The work involves observations from the Amundsen Sea and Weddell Sea as well as idealized numerical modelling and laboratory experiments on a Coriolis rotating platform in Grenoble.