<
https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-how-rapidly-ice-sheets-can-retreat-and-what-it-could-mean-for-antarctic-melting-203277>
"The Antarctic Ice Sheet, which covers an area greater than the US and Mexico
combined, holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 57 metres
if melted completely. This would flood hundreds of cities worldwide. And
evidence suggests it is melting fast. Satellite observations have revealed that
grounded ice (ice that is in contact with the bed beneath it) in coastal areas
of West Antarctica has been lost at a rate of up to 30 metres per day in recent
years.
But the satellite record of ice sheet change is relatively short as there are
only 50 years’ worth of observations. This limits our understanding of how ice
sheets have evolved over longer periods of time, including the maximum speed at
which they can retreat and the parts that are most vulnerable to melting.
So, we set out to investigate how ice sheets responded during a previous period
of climatic warming – the last “deglaciation”. This climate shift occurred
between roughly 20,000 and 11,000 years ago and spanned Earth’s transition from
a glacial period, when ice sheets covered large parts of Europe and North
America, to the period in which we currently live (called the Holocene
interglacial period).
During the last deglaciation, rates of temperature and sea-level rise were
broadly comparable to today. So, studying the changes to ice sheets in this
period has allowed us to estimate how Earth’s two remaining ice sheets
(Greenland and Antarctica) might respond to an even warmer climate in the
future.
Our recently published results show that ice sheets are capable of retreating
in bursts of up to 600 metres per day. This is much faster than has been
observed so far from space."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
