Dr. Terence J. Hughes
Department of Earth Sciences/Climate Change Institute/University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5790, USA
1 April 2006

1980-1992
In 1982 and 1983, the International Glaciological Society published my papers on the disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves by thinning (1982) and fracture (1983). I also had fun with a topsy-turvy paper arguing that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet had produced the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (1982). Today the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is ten times bigger, so nobody took my paper seriously. Disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves by fracture is now a very big deal, however, because it has happened several times in recent years.

In 1986, I proposed the "Jakobshavn Effect" after several trips with the U.S. Coast Guard to study calving of giant icebergs from Jakobshavn Isbrae in West Greenland. It has long been the fastest ice stream on Earth and it drains about eight percent of the Greenland Ice sheet. The Jakobshavn Effect combines disintegration of a buttressing ice shelf floating in Jakobshavn Isfjord with ice-bed uncoupling resulting from surface meltwater reaching the bed through crevasses in the ice stream. The result would be rapid downdraw of interior ice caused by a sequence of positive feedback mechanisms. Both unbuttressing and uncoupling were reported in 2002 by NASA glaciologists. Since then several other large Greenland ice streams have begun showing the same behavior, all doubling their velocity, some within a year. That confined and pinned ice shelves could buttress ice streams was a topsy-turvy idea I put in my first ISCAP bulletin in 1972. The objection was, “How could ice at the end of the line affect what went on earlier?”

In 1987, I proposed "The Marine Ice Transgression Hypothesis" (MITH) in Geografiska Annaler to account for paleo-shorelines and oxygen-isotope records showing that descent into a Quaternary glaciation cycle was as rapid as its end. These cycles end so fast they are called Terminations. Many mechanisms have been proposed to account for Terminations (I've published a few myself), but none account for the rapid start. In the traditional view, ice fields on highlands move into lowlands and then cross shallow marine embayments like Hudson Bay and the Baltic Sea to become the respective Laurentide and Scandinavian ice sheets. When ice caps on arctic islands such as in the Spitzbergen archipelago reach shallow seas today, however, they end as calving ice walls grounded in water. They aren’t big enough to lower sea level so they can advance on land, nor were former ice caps. In MITH, sea ice thickens into an ice shelf, so the calved ice is incorporated into the ice shelves, eventually grounding them to produce marine ice sheets on shallow continental shelves that thicken and advance onto land. This prevents north-flowing rivers in North America and Eurasia from reaching the sea, so sea level must drop rapidly, which causes further grounding of arctic ice shelves. The arctic then becomes a "White Hole" into which precipitation falls but cannot escape. This idea that Quaternary ice sheets rose up from the sea and advanced onto land hasn't caught on. It’s probably too topsy-turvy for most people. Perhaps MITH isn't the right acronym.

In 1987, Boreas published "Deluge II and the Continent of Doom: Rising sea level and collapsing Antarctic ice." Deluge I was the Genesis flood. Deluge II will be gravitational collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, since it would submerge coastal lowlands to a depth of up to 65 meters. That would be a proper Deluge, especially if it was fast. My title was inspired by the movie, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Arguing that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse rapidly is definitely topsy-turvy thinking.

From 1986 to 1991, to prove I could be conventional, I collaborated in papers with George Denton, Wibjorn Karlen, Shamis Fastook, Mauri Pelto, Masayuki Nakagawa, John Scofield, Ian Whillans, Kees van der Veen, and others.