title: Effect of sedimentation on ice-sheet grounding-line stability.
abstract: Sedimentation filling space beneath ice shelves helps to stabilize ice sheets against grounding-line retreat in response to a rise in relative sea level of at least several meters. Recent Antarctic changes thus cannot be attributed to sea-level rise, strengthening earlier interpretations that warming has driven ice-sheet mass loss. Large sea-level rise, such as the approximately 100-meter rise at the end of the last ice age, may overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation, but smaller sea-level changes are unlikely to have synchronized the behavior of ice sheets in the past.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. rba6@psu.edu
authors.forename: Richard B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Alley
authors.forename: Sridhar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Anandakrishnan
authors.forename: Todd K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Dupont
authors.forename: Byron R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Parizek
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pollard