The instruments showed that surface water heated by the sun flowed into the cavity under the ice shelf, causing melt rates almost to triple in the summer.
Dr Stewart added: ‘Climate change is likely to result in less sea ice, and higher surface ocean temperatures in the Ross Sea, suggesting that melt rates in this region will increase in the future.’
The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. Co-author Dr Poul Christoffersen, from Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute, pointed out that collapsing ice shelves can double or triple the speed at which glaciers flow to the ocean.
‘The difference here is the sheer size of the Ross Ice Shelf, which is over 100 times larger than the ice shelves we’ve already seen disappear,’ he said.
‘The observations we made at the front of the ice shelf have direct implications for many large glaciers that flow into the ice shelf, some as far as 900 kilometres (559 miles) away.’
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