There is a new paper out in Nature Communications about meltwater pulses and accelerated ice loss from Antarctica. It describes model simulations of Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the last 25,000 years. What was found was "several episodes of accelerated ice-sheet recession, the largest being coincident with meltwater pulse 1A." The abstract continues: "This resulted from reduced Southern Ocean overturning following Heinrich Event 1, when warmer subsurface water thermally eroded grounded marine-based ice and instigated a positive feedback that further accelerated ice-sheet retreat."
Below is a clever animation from the Nature Communications article, demonstrating how the warmer sub-surface of the ocean can melt Antarctica.
