Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/45431

KEYWORDS : multiscale structure;ice shelves;global climate;ice cores;cross-disciplinary modelling

Polar ice masses, including grounded (inland) ice, ice shelves, icebergs and sea ice, constitute an essential part of the global climate system. They interact with the hydrosphere and the atmosphere, and, if persisting through millennia, serve as archives of the past climate of Earth. Currently. significant efforts in climate reconstructions are being undertaken, serving as a basis for climate predictions into the future. It has been argued in Part I of this work that more attention should be given to interactions between structures on distinct scales (multiscale structural interactions), which seem to play a decisive role in the structure-form-environment interplay (SFEI) in grounded polar ice. As ice shelves play an equally important role in the global climate, the present article is devoted to the description of the multiscale structure of ice shelves.