Brief communication: 'The 2013 Erebus glacier tongue calving
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TitleBrief communication: "The 2013 Erebus glacier tongue calving event"AbstractThe Erebus Glacier Tongue, a small floating glacier in southern McMurdo Sound, is one of the best-studied ice tongues in Antarctica. Despite this, its calving on the 27 February 2013 (UTC) was around 10 yr earlier than previously predicted. The calving was likely a result of ocean currents and the absence of fast ice. The subsequent trajectory of the newly created iceberg supports previous descriptions of the surface ocean circulation in southern McMurdo Sound. Copyright Author(s) 2013.AcknowledgementsThe MODIS data used in this study were acquired as part of the NASA's Earth-Sun System Division and archived and distributed by the MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS). ASTER images were obtained with support from the Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS). Bathymetry data is from Davey (2004). The authors appreciate the support of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Automatic Weather Station Program for the wind data (NSF grant numbers ANT-0944018 and ANT-1245663). Craig Stewart, Pat Langhorne, Paul Woodgate and Ross Vennell are thanked for discussions. We gratefully acknowledge M. Frezzotti and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on the Discussion version of this paper. This work is supported by the New Zealand Royal Society Marsden Fund, NIWA Core-funded research and Antarctica New Zealand.
