Chapter 01 · Arrival
The ice is melting
from below.
Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers on Earth. The damage is invisible from the surface — it happens deep underwater, at the ice front.
Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers on Earth. The damage is invisible from the surface — it happens deep underwater, at the ice front.
Meltwater rises along the ice face in a buoyancy plume, driving a recirculation cell that draws ever more warm water against the glacier. The melt accelerates itself.
This retrograde slope is what makes Pine Island so vulnerable: as the grounding line retreats, the ice sits in ever-deeper water — exposing more of its face to the warm ocean.
Far from the glacier, the continental shelf rises to a natural sill — a underwater ridge that nearly blocks the trough. Nearly.
Warm, dense circumpolar deep water rides up from the deep ocean and spills over the natural sill unimpeded — then sinks down the trough’s slope, straight toward the glacier’s underside.
Anchored to the sill by moorings, a flexible reinforced fabric stands up into the current, held taut by buoyancy elements at its crest. A control just appeared below — take the slider and raise it yourself.
The inflow piles against the curtain and curls back toward the deep ocean. Only a thin, weakened overflow spills past the crest — far too little to sustain the old melt rates. Lower the slider and watch the warm water flood back in.
With the warm intrusion blocked 200 km away, the water at the ice front cools. Melt rates fall, the buoyancy cycle weakens, and the glacier gains what we need most: time.
Based on the seabed curtain concept for glacier protection, illustrated for UArctic. Concept research: ice–ocean interaction studies at Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica.