Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to No, Lindy...

Maybe yes, maybe no
Fox — (archived)

There is no physical way that floating ice shelves could affect geology.

Not directly, true. But relief from the weight of glacial ice does cause continental land masses to "rebound", ever so slowly. I've read that northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, is still gaining average altitude since the last Ice Age.

So, say, a big hunk of a floating ice shelf breaks off and floats away, allowing more of the glacier(s) that spawned it to flow toward the sea... without regenerative snowfall, the glacier weighs less and the land beneath it 'rebounds'. Obviously, the effects will be localized, probably immeasurable except by GPS altimetric data, and then only in the long term. Interested parties should concentrate solely on Antarctic seismometers, but not expect to find any signal in the noise.

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