What controls melting at the base of floating ice shelves?
In plain words
Warm ocean water melts Antarctic ice shelves from below, which weakens the resistance they give to the ice flowing behind them. How fast this melting happens depends on thin turbulent water layers right under the ice that models cannot yet capture well.
Precise statement
Derive and validate a parameterization of basal melt rate m as a function of far-field temperature, salinity and current speed under ice shelves, covering shear-driven and convective, double-diffusive regimes of the ice-ocean boundary layer and the effect of basal channels and crevasses. An answer is a melt law tested against direct under-ice observations to within a factor of order unity across regimes.
What would settle it
Under-ice measurements of turbulent fluxes and melt rates (from borehole and autonomous vehicle campaigns) matched by large-eddy simulations across flow regimes.