Vibrations of Mertz Glacier ice tongue, East Antarctica

At the time of its calving in February 2010, Mertz Glacier, East Antarctica, was characterized by a 145 km long, 35 km wide floating tongue. In this paper, we use GPS data from the Collaborative Research into Antarctic Calving and Iceberg Evolution (CRAC-ICE) 2007/08 and 2009/10 field seasons to investigate the dynamics of Mertz Glacier. Two months of data were collected at the end of the 2007/08 field season from two kinematic GPS stations situated on each side of the main rift of the glacier tongue and from rock stations located around the ice tongue during 2008/09. Using Precise Point Positioning with integer ambiguity fixing, we observe that the two GPS stations recorded vibrations of the ice tongue with several dominant periods. We compare these results with a simple elastic model of the ice tongue and find that the natural vibration frequencies are similar to those observed. This information provides a better understanding of their possible effects on rift propagation and hence on the glacier calving processes.