Abstract. The Antarctic Peninsula has seen rapid and widespread changes in the extent of its ice shelves in recent decades, including the collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves in 1995 and 2002, respectively. In 2017 the Larsen C Ice Shelf (LCIS) lost around 10 % of its area by calving one of the largest icebergs ever recorded (A68). This has raised questions about the structural integrity of the shelf and the impact of any changes in its extent on the flow of its tributary glaciers. In this work, we used an ice flow model to study the instantaneous impact of changes in the thickness and extent of the LCIS on ice dynamics and in particular on changes in the grounding line flux (GLF). We initialised the model to a pre-A68 calving state and first replicated the calving of the A68 iceberg. We found that there was a limited instantaneous impact on upstream flow – with speeds increasing by less than 10 % across almost all of the shelf – and a 0.28 % increase in GLF. This result is supported by observations of ice velocity made before and after the calving event. We then perturbed the ice-shelf geometry through a series of instantaneous, idealised calving and thinning experiments of increasing magnitude. We found that significant changes to the geometry of the ice shelf, through both calving and thinning, resulted in limited instantaneous changes in GLF. For example, to produce a doubling of GLF from calving, the new calving front needed to be moved to 5 km from the grounding line, removing almost the entire ice shelf. For thinning, over 200 m of the ice-shelf thickness had to be removed across the whole shelf to produce a doubling of GLF. Calculating the instantaneous increase in GLF (607 %) after removing the entire ice shelf allowed us to quantify the total amount of buttressing provided by the LCIS. From this, we identified that the region of the ice shelf in the first 5 km downstream of the grounding line provided over 80 % of the buttressing capacity of the shelf. This is due to the large resistive stresses generated in the narrow, local embayments downstream of the largest tributary glaciers.

Abstract. The Antarctic Peninsula has seen rapid and widespread changes in the extent of its ice shelves in recent decades, including the collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves in 1995 and 2002, respectively. In 2017 the Larsen C ice shelf (LCIS) lost around 10 % of its area by calving one of the largest icebergs ever recorded (A68). This has raised questions about the structural integrity of the shelf and the impact of any changes in its extent on the flow of its tributary glaciers. In this work, we used an ice flow model to study the instantaneous impact of changes in the thickness and extent of the LCIS on ice dynamics, and in particular on changes in the grounding line flux (GLF). We initialised the model to a pre-A68 calving state, and first replicated the calving of the A68 iceberg. We found that there was a limited impact on upstream flow – with speeds increasing by less than 10 % across almost all of the shelf – and a 0.5 % increase in GLF. This result is supported by observations of ice velocity made before and after the calving event. We then perturbed the ice-shelf geometry through idealised calving and thinning experiments of increasing magnitude. We found that significant changes to the geometry of the ice shelf, through both calving and thinning, resulted in limited changes in GLF. For example, to produce a doubling of GLF from calving, the new calving front needed to be moved to 5 km from the grounding line, removing almost the entire ice shelf. For thinning, over 200 m of the ice-shelf thickness had to be removed across the whole shelf to produce a doubling of GLF. Calculating the increase in GLF (607 %) after removing the entire ice shelf allowed us to quantify the total amount of buttressing provided by the LCIS. From this, we identified that the region of the ice shelf in the first 5 km downstream of the grounding line provided over 80 % of the buttressing capacity of the shelf. This is due to the large resistive stresses generated in the narrow, local embayments downstream of the largest tributary glaciers.

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<p>The future viability of the Larsen C Ice Shelf (LCIS) has been called into question following the collapse of its more northerly, neighbouring ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the calving of the A68 iceberg in July 2017. Initially, using the ice-flow model Úa, we conduct time-independent experiments and find that the vast majority of the buttressing capacity of the LCIS is generated in the regions of the ice shelf just downstream of the grounding line. We also find that the Bawden and Gipps Ice Rises provide a negligible proportion of the total buttressing capacity of the ice shelf, as determined by modelled instantaneous changes in grounding line flux (GLF) in response to their removal.</p><p>We then conduct time-dependent experiments to examine the transient evolution of the LCIS and its tributary glaciers to changes in ice-shelf buttressing. We present, for the first time, simulations of the transient response of the system to the loss of basal contact at the Bawden and Gipps Ice Rises.  We find that the instantaneous increase in ice-shelf velocities is sustained throughout the 100-year model run, with associated dynamic thinning of the ice shelf on the order of tens of metres during this period. However, we find that the impact on the grounded ice dynamics, GLF and ice volume above flotation (VAF) is limited.</p><p>Through idealised calving experiments we show that the instantaneous response in GLF to a reduction in ice-shelf buttressing decays rapidly in the first few years following the calving event. We also find an increasing, but non-linear, relationship between the reduction in ice-shelf buttressing and the loss of VAF after 100 years, largely controlled by the bedrock topography of the tributary glaciers. With our model setup, using the BedMachine Antarctica v2 ice thickness and bedrock topography data, we find that the dynamic mass loss 100 years after the complete collapse of the LCIS is ~0.6 mm SLE.</p>