Melting beneath Totten Glacier driven by natural variability

The Totten Glacier, near Casey research station, is thought to be the ‘canary in the coalmine’ for climate change in East Antarctica, holding back at least three metres of potential sea level rise. Previous studies have suggested that it is thinning and beginning to retreat. In a new study I and my co-authors from the Australian Antarctic Division*, CSIRO, and University of Texas, used computer simulations (previously described in Australian Antarctic Magazine 21: 14-15, 2011) to pick apart how and why melting was varying beneath the Totten Ice Shelf.