Fig. 6: The ice-shelf melt rate is strongly slope-dependent and steep slopes contribute up to 27% of the ice loss under the TEIS along only 9% of the ice base.
From: Heterogeneous melting near the Thwaites Glacier grounding line
a, Estimated spatially varying ice-shelf melt rates along T1 and T2 show the strong influence of local slope. Here each curve consists of individual melt-rate data points that have been calculated using the regionally averaged ocean conditions (Methods) corresponding to the regions labelled in Fig. 5. Red curves are from T1 and blue curves are from T2. b, Sideways melting along slopes greater than 30° contributes an estimated 27% of the melting under the TEIS, whereas these slopes account for only 9% of the ice base. Upward melting along low slopes is still the most notable source of melting, in which slopes less than 30° account for 73% of melting, while representing 91% of the ice.
