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Ice tongues are unconfined by land on their lateral margins and are sensitive to external forcing from the ocean. They are found sporadically around the Antarctic coast but are common in the western Ross Sea. Lateral flexure creates bending stresses within these ice tongues which is likely to contribute to their fragility and may restrict their spatial distribution. A three-year time series (2017–2020) of synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) and differential interferometry (DInSAR) is used to observe the lateral flexure of the 10 km long Erebus Ice Tongue as a result of ocean currents. The fast ice area around the ice tongue was mapped during the same period. It was found that when fast ice was absent (34.7% of the time), the average lateral movement of the ice tongue was twice as high (0.44 m) as when it was embedded in fast ice (0.19 m). A significant correlation (0.45) between flexure and tidal currents was found when fast ice was absent. An analytical model tuned to observations suggests that even without sea ice for stabilisation, the lateral bending stresses induced by the ocean are insufficient to cause calving without additional amplifying factors.

Tidal flexure in ice shelf grounding zones has been used extensively in the past to determine grounding line position and ice properties. Although the rheology of ice is viscoelastic at tidal loading frequencies, most modelling studies have assumed some form of linear elastic beam approximation to match observed flexure profiles. Here we use density, radar and DInSAR measurements in combination with full-Stokes viscoelastic modelling to investigate a range of additional controls on the flexure of the Southern McMurdo Ice Shelf. We find that inclusion of observed basal crevasses and density dependent ice stiffness can greatly alter the flexure profile and yet fitting a simple elastic beam model to that profile will still produce an excellent fit. Estimates of the effective Young's modulus derived by fitting flexure profiles are shown to vary by over 200% depending on whether these factors are included, even when the local thickness is well constrained. Conversely, estimates of the grounding line position are relatively insensitive to these considerations for the case of a steep bed slope in our study region. By fitting tidal amplitudes only, and ignoring phase information, elastic beam theory can provide a good fit to observations in a wide variety of situations. This should, however, not be taken as an indication that the underlying rheological assumptions are correct.

Grounding zones are vital to ice-sheet mass balance and its coupling to the global ocean circulation. Processes here determine the mass discharge from the grounded ice sheet, to the floating ice shelves. The response of this transition zone to tidal forcing has been described by both elastic and viscoelastic models. Here we examine the validity of these models for grounding zone flexure over tidal timescales using field data from the Southern McMurdo Ice Shelf (78° 15′S, 167° 7′E). Observations of tidal movement were carried out by simultaneous tiltmeter and GPS measurements along a profile across the grounding zone. Finite-element simulations covering a 64 d period reveal that the viscoelastic model fits best the observations using a Young's modulus of 1.6 GPa and a viscosity of 1013.7 Pa s (≈ 50.1 TPa s). We conclude that the elastic model is only well-constrained for tidal displacements >35% of the spring-tidal amplitude using a Young's modulus of 1.62 ± 0.69 GPa, but that a viscoelastic model is necessary to adequately capture tidal bending at amplitudes below this threshold. In grounding zones where bending stresses are greater than at the Southern McMurdo Ice Shelf or ice viscosity is lower, the threshold would be even higher.