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. Recent observations and ice-dynamic modeling suggest that a marineice-sheet instability (MISI) might have been triggered in WestAntarctica. The corresponding outlet glaciers, Pine Island Glacier(PIG) and Thwaites Glacier (TG), showed significant retreat duringat least the last 2 decades. While other regions in Antarcticahave the topographic predisposition for the same kind ofinstability, it is so far unclear how fast these instabilities wouldunfold if they were initiated. Here we employ the concept ofsimilitude to estimate the characteristic timescales of severalpotentially MISI-prone outlet glaciers around the Antarcticcoast. Our results suggest that TG and PIG have the fastest responsetime of all investigated outlets, with TG responding about 1.25 to 2times as fast as PIG, while other outlets around Antarctica would beup to 10 times slower if destabilized. These results have to beviewed in light of the strong assumptions made in theirderivation. These include the absence of ice-shelf buttressing, theone-dimensionality of the approach and the uncertainty of theavailable data. We argue however that the current topographicsituation and the physical conditions of the MISI-prone outletglaciers carry the information of their respective timescale andthat this information can be partially extracted through asimilitude analysis.

Scaling of instability timescales of Antarctic outlet glaciers based on one-dimensional similitude analysis