Abstract. Two ice-dynamic transitions of the Antarctic ice sheet -the boundary of grounded ice features and the freelyfloating boundary -are mapped at 15-m resolution by participants of the International Polar Year project ASAID using customized software combining Landsat-7 imagery and ICESat/GLAS laser altimetry. The grounded ice boundary is 53 610 km long; 74 % abuts to floating ice shelves or outlet glaciers, 19 % is adjacent to open or sea-ice covered ocean, and 7 % of the boundary ice terminates on land. The freelyfloating boundary, called here the hydrostatic line, is the most landward position on ice shelves that expresses the full amplitude of oscillating ocean tides. It extends 27 521 km and is discontinuous. Positional (one-sigma) accuracies of the grounded ice boundary vary an order of magnitude ranging from ±52 m for the land and open-ocean terminating segments to ±502 m for the outlet glaciers. The hydrostatic Correspondence to: R. Bindschadler (robert.a.bindschadler@nasa.gov) line is less well positioned with errors over 2 km. Elevations along each line are selected from 6 candidate digital elevation models based on their agreement with ICESat elevation values and surface shape inferred from the Landsat imagery. Elevations along the hydrostatic line are converted to ice thicknesses by applying a firn-correction factor and a flotation criterion. BEDMAP-compiled data and other airborne data are compared to the ASAID elevations and ice thicknesses to arrive at quantitative (one-sigma) uncertainties of surface elevations of ±3.6, ±9.6, ±11.4, ±30 and ±100 m for five ASAID-assigned confidence levels. Over one-half of the surface elevations along the grounded ice boundary and over one-third of the hydrostatic line elevations are ranked in the highest two confidence categories. A comparison between ASAID-calculated ice shelf thicknesses and BEDMAP-compiled data indicate a thin-ice bias of 41.2 ± 71.3 m for the ASAID ice thicknesses. The relationship between the seaward offset of the hydrostatic line from the grounded ice boundary only weakly matches a Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.

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[1] A dense grid of ice-penetrating radar sections acquired over Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica has revealed a network of sinuous subglacial channels, typically 500 m to 3 km wide, and up to 200 m high, in the ice-shelf base. These subglacial channels develop while the ice is floating and result from melting at the base of the ice shelf. Above the apex of most channels, the radar shows isolated reflections from within the ice shelf.Comparison of the radar data with acoustic data obtained using an autonomous submersible, confirms that these echoes arise from open basal crevasses 50-100 m wide aligned with the subglacial channels and penetrating up to 1/3 of the ice thickness. Analogous sets of surface crevasses appear on the ridges between the basal channels. We suggest that both sets of crevasses were formed during the melting of the subglacial channels as a response to vertical flexing of the ice shelf toward the hydrostatic condition. Finite element modeling of stresses produced after the formation of idealized basal channels indicates that the stresses generated have the correct pattern and, if the channels were formed sufficiently rapidly, would have sufficient magnitude to explain the formation of the observed basal and surface crevasse sets. We conclude that ice-shelf basal melting plays a role in determining patterns of surface and basal crevassing. Increased delivery of warm ocean water into the sub-ice shelf cavity may therefore cause not only thinning but also structural weakening of the ice shelf, perhaps, as a prelude to eventual collapse.

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Comparison of declassified satellite photography taken in 1963 with more recent satellite imagery reveals that large changes have occurred in the region where an active ice stream enters the Ross Ice Shelf. Ice stream B has widened by 4 kilometers, at a rate much faster than suggested by models, and has decreased in speed by 50 percent. The ice ridge between ice streams B and C has eroded 14 kilometers. These changes, along with changes in the crevassing around Crary Ice Rise, imply that this region's velocity field shifted during this century.