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| Kamb Ice Stream | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kamb Ice Stream |
| Location | Antarctica |
Kamb Ice Stream is a major ice flow within Antarctic West Antarctica that drains part of the Ross Ice Shelf catchment adjacent to the Marie Byrd Land sector. It lies among a network of ice streams and outlet glaciers that influence the mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and interact with features such as the Siple Coast, Thwaites Glacier, and Pine Island Glacier. The ice stream has been a focus for glaciological field campaigns by organizations including the United States Antarctic Program, the British Antarctic Survey, and the International Polar Year research community.
Kamb Ice Stream occupies a trough between the Siple Coast and the Ross Ice Shelf front, neighbored by ice streams and glaciers such as Bindschadler Ice Stream, Whillans Ice Stream, MacAyeal Ice Stream, and the Surge of Ice Streams. Its grounding zone sits proximal to the Ross Sea embayment and is influenced by bathymetry mapped by expeditions including those of the US Geological Survey and the Alfred Wegener Institute. The ice surface morphology includes shear margins, crevasse fields, and tributary inflows fed from the interior West Antarctic Ice Sheet drainage basins near Marie Byrd Land and the Transantarctic Mountains. Satellite missions such as Landsat, ICESat, CryoSat, and RADARSAT have documented its length, flowlines, and surface elevation changes.
Flow of the ice stream is regulated by basal conditions, hydrology, and till dynamics studied in the context of basal sliding, ice rheology described by Glen's flow law applied by researchers from institutions like Caltech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Colorado Boulder. Interactions with subglacial sediments, till deformation, and effective pressure have been modeled using frameworks from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and numerical models developed at British Antarctic Survey and Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. Observations have revealed episodic stick-slip behavior contrasted with continuously streaming neighbors such as Whillans Ice Stream. Seismic studies by teams from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and University of Washington detected basal tremors associated with sliding, while radar sounding from groups at Ohio State University mapped internal layering and basal roughness.
Exploration of the region occurred during twentieth-century campaigns by expeditions including the United States Antarctic Service Expedition, the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, and research supported by the National Science Foundation. The ice stream was named in recognition of scientists associated with Antarctic glaciology and mapped during airborne surveys by the U.S. Navy and civilian contractors working with the U.S. Antarctic Program. Field parties from universities such as University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Michigan, and Victoria University of Wellington conducted ground traverses, hot-water drilling, and instrumentation deployments that established baseline observations. Naming conventions followed procedures of bodies like the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names and were coordinated with international gazetteers maintained by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
Kamb Ice Stream has been central to multidisciplinary experiments integrating geodesy, glaciology, and geophysics conducted by teams from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Space Agency, Geological Survey of Canada, and universities worldwide. Projects have included GPS networks, borehole thermometry, tiltmeters, and subglacial access via hot-water drilling pioneered by groups at University of Alaska Fairbanks and Utrecht University. Ice-penetrating radar surveys from British Antarctic Survey and airborne campaigns by Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory mapped bed topography and subglacial hydrology, while isotope studies at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University examined paleoclimate signals. Coupled ice-ocean models by teams at University of Bristol and University of Cambridge have used data assimilation to simulate responses to perturbations observed by ICESat-2 and GRACE gravity missions.
The behavior of the ice stream affects the stability of the adjacent Ross Ice Shelf and thus has implications for global sea level considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments. Interactions with neighboring outlets such as Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier and feedbacks involving oceanic forcing from the Southern Ocean and modified by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current have been topics in studies at WHOI and National Oceanography Centre. Paleoglaciological reconstructions using cosmogenic nuclide analyses from teams at University of Oxford and ETH Zurich have constrained past grounding-line migrations and ice-sheet sensitivity scenarios examined in reports by IPCC and policy briefings by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change delegates.
Field operations in the Kamb Ice Stream area have been supported by logistics from McMurdo Station, Scott Base, and aircraft operations by Royal New Zealand Air Force and the U.S. Air Force using ski-equipped aircraft and over-snow vehicles provided by contractors and national programs. Safety and environmental oversight have been coordinated under agreements like the Antarctic Treaty and the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. Scientific stations, temporary field camps, and instrumentation deployments have been facilitated by logistics centers including Antarctic Logistics Centre International and national programs such as the Australian Antarctic Division and Instituto Antártico Chileno.
Category:Ice streams of Antarctica