The study warns that the meltdown could contribute more than 11 feet to rising global sea levels over the next few centuries. Two large masses of ice cover Antarctica and feed its many glaciers: the ice sheets of East and West Antarctica. Thanks to global warming, recent decades have seen an acceleration in the pace at which the Western ice sheet has been thinning. In particular, the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in the West Antarctic ice sheet are especially vulnerable to global warming and are already contributing to rising sea levels.
In a new study, Earth scientist Dr. Dylan Rood of Imperial College London and his colleagues calculated the local rate of change in sea level around these two glaciers.
These measures, they explained, serve as an indirect way to measure ice loss.
They found that current glacial retreat rates are unprecedented in the last 5,500 years.
Both glaciers have the potential to cause large sea level rise globally, as the Thwaites Glacier alone is almost the same size as Britain, with a total area of about 74,132 square miles.
The Pine Island Glacier, meanwhile, is not much smaller, at about 62,664 square miles.
Dr Rood said: “Although these vulnerable glaciers have been relatively stable over the last millennia, their current rate of retreat is accelerating and global sea levels are rising.
“These current high rates of melting ice may indicate that the vital arteries in the heart of the West Antarctic ice sheet have broken.”
This, he explained, would lead “to the acceleration of ocean flow which is potentially disastrous for the future global sea level in a warming world.
“Now we have to work urgently if it’s too late to stop the bleeding.”
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In their study, the team considered the size of glaciers dating back to the Middle Holocene period, more than 5,000 years ago, during which the climate was warmer than today and therefore the glaciers. glaciers were smaller and therefore sea level was higher.
They focused on the remains of ancient Antarctic beaches, whose footprints today can be found high above modern sea level.
When heavy glaciers form on Earth, their heavy weight pushes down – or “loads” – the Earth’s surface. Similarly, when they melt, the earth bounces, moving what was once a beach to a position higher than sea level.
Thus, the local sea level in Antarctica could drop during the Middle Holocene, although the melting of glacial ice caused the average global sea level to rise.
By determining the age of the various ancient beaches, achieved by radiocarbon dating of sea shells and penguin bones, the team was able to reconstruct past changes in the relative level of the Antarctic Sea over time.
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University of Maine senior author and professor of geology Brenda Hall said: “The relative change in sea level allows you to see the loading and unloading of the crust on a large scale by the ice.
“For example, the re-advancement of the glacier, which would result in a load of crust, would slow the rate of relative fall in sea level or could even cause the earth to sink below sea level. “.
The team’s results indicated a steady drop in relative sea levels over the past 5,500 years, a finding that the team interprets as the result of ice loss just before this period.
This behavior, they explained, is consistent with the relatively stable behavior of the glacier.
However, researchers also found that the relative rate of sea level drop since the Middle Holocene is almost five times lower than measured today, a difference attributable to recent rapid ice losses.
Future research, the team said, will see rock samples collected from under glaciers to help determine if current accelerated melting rates could still be reversible.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.