The present, sustained retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet intensifies concerns regarding its instability and potential collapse that were first raised more than five decades ago. Improved projections of mass loss, and associated oceanic changes, require advances in our understanding of the dynamics that affect the behaviour of marine-terminating glaciers, ice streams, and ice shelves. Process-based approaches are fundamental to understanding the mechanisms that are driving and will continue to drive future marine ice sheet retreat on time scales from several decades to several centuries.

We invite contributions focusing on processes and mechanisms that influence marine ice sheet stability and retreat, including, but not limited to: marine ice sheet instability, buttressing and pinning points, calving and ice cliff failure, ice shelf and melange stability and disintegration, flow and deformation behaviour, subglacial geologic structures and topographic control, and model-data integration/assimilation.