Surface Melt on East Antarctic Ice Shelves

Antarctica is surrounded by floating ice shelves that are an important control on sea level rise, but which are threatened by warming air temperatures. This thesis uses satellite observations and modelled climate data to investigate the different processes that control how much melt occurs every summer at the surface where the ice shelf meets the atmosphere. The answers are complex, with processes occurring at multiple spatial and temporal scales, ranging from the conditions of the ice shelf surface (e.g. bare ice or fresh snowfall) through to large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns that also affect the weather in Australia.