Regardless of how aggressively humans act to reduce fossil fuel emissions, waters around some of Antarctica’s glaciers are forecast to warm at a pace three times faster than they have in the past, a new study says.
In November 2013, a large iceberg separated from the front of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier and began its journey across Pine Island Bay, a basin of the Amundsen Sea. Accelerating ice losses are all but “unavoidable” this century in vulnerable West Antarctic ice shelves as waters warm around them, according to new research.
The research helps to solidify an understanding that humans have likely already pushed some polar ice systems past a tipping point and into escalating decline.As the Southern Ocean warms, thinning the floating sea ice, it is also increasingly threatening the ice shelves.
Other scientists not involved in the research also called its approach sound. Scambos said the analysis is “about as good as the state of the art at present.” That the researchers described the melting as “unavoidable” in the title of their paper “means they’re pretty confident,” he added.Because the ice shelves are floating, their melting does not directly add to sea level rise.
according to data shared by Eric Rignot, an expert on Antarctic glaciers at the University of California-Irvine.
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