12 J. H. Mercer, "West Antarctic ice Sheet and CO2 Greenhouse Effect-Threat of Disaster," Nature 271 (5643), 321-325 (1978). A linear trend means you have the same mass loss every year. If we want to understand how the ocean is impacting the ice sheet, go to where it’s hitting the ice sheet with a sledgehammer, not with a little tack hammer.”, Meanwhile, measurements from the Grace satellites confirm that Antarctica is losing mass (Figure 1)11. Res. 6 Climate models, or computer simulations that incorporate all the factors that affect Earth’s climate, predicted this behavior. 11Isabella Velicogna, "Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE," Geophys. Known as East Antarctica, this section has an average altitude of about 2 kilometer (1.2 miles), higher than the American Colorad… Melting was mostly distributed on the edge of the Antarctic ice sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula, with an increasing trend. Its impact on the sea level rise will become significant. A new paper explores what will happen to the southernmost continent if we curb carbon emissions — or do nothing. West Antarctica has warmed by more than 0.1 °C/decade in the last 50 years, and this warming is strongest in winter and spring. Mercer’s warning signs are already appearing, despite the reality that human activities haven’t yet raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to twice the pre-industrial average. Over the next few years, satellite radar data showed that some of the ice streams flowing behind Larsen B had accelerated significantly, while others, still supported by smaller ice shelves, had not9. Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf experienced its highest rate of melting since records began 40 years ago from 2019-2020, a new study has … The net, total behavior of all ice in the Antarctic is causing a significant and accelerating rise in sea level. Sea ice is frozen seawater that is usually less than a few meters thick. An international team of researchers led by geoscientist Dr Kim Jakob from Heidelberg University has now examined the dynamics of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet more closely. As temperatures rise due to climate change, the melting of polar ice sheets is accelerating. A new NASA study says that Antarctica is overall accumulating ice. the ice that sticks around even at the height of the Arctic summer) is such a big reflector of the summer sun. Well, actually, sea ice and land ice are not the same. A major review published in 2009 found that Rignot’s Pine Island Glacier finding hadn’t been a fluke7: a large majority of the marine glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula were retreating, and their retreat was speeding up. 13 R. Kwok & D.A. Other evidence that the amount of sea ice around Antarctica seems to be increasing slightly2-4 is being used in the same way. 36, L19503 (2009). 2 http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ IMAGES/ current.anom.south.jpg, 3http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2009/ 04/090421101629.htm, 4http://nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/ difference.html. “Once we lose the summer ice cover permanently, will we tip the planet into a new climate state?”. Res. They have different effects, too. The disintegration, which was caught on camera by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imaging instruments on board its Terra and Aqua satellites, was dramatic: it took just three weeks to crumble a 12,000-year old ice shelf. One new paper1, which states there has been less surface melting recently than in past years, has been cited as “proof” that there’s no global warming. Lett. A lot of attention has been devoted to sea ice in the Arctic over the last few years, where ice cover has clearly shrunk and thinned since the beginning of the satellite data record in 197813. In the summer, meltwater ponds on the surface can drain into the cracks. 8 D. J. Wingham et.al., "Spatial and Temporal Evolution of Pine Island Glacier thinning, 1995-2006," Geophys. By Erik Conway “The important message is that it is not a linear trend. Although this is partly offset by fall cooling in East Antarctica, this effect is restricted to the 1980s and 1990s. There has been lots of talk lately about Antarctica and whether or not the continent’s giant ice sheet is melting. The newly independent iceberg is one of the largest ever recorded. In the prestigious journal Nature he wrote, “I contend that a major disaster — a rapid 5 meter (16 foot) rise in sea level, caused by deglaciation of West Antarctica — may be imminent or in progress after atmospheric CO2 [carbon dioxide] content has only doubled.” He forecast visible changes only decades in the future, ensuring little policy-level, let alone public, interest. However, since the 1990s the problem has been attacked from multiple directions via multiple methods. 7P.A. Michael Schodlok, a JPL scientist who models the way ice shelves and the ocean interact, says melting of the underside of the shelf is a pre-requisite to these collapses. The latest data reveals that Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate, too. When sea ice melts, sea level does not change. 5 J. L. Chen et al., “Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements,” Nat. I'm not sure about the area or the depth of ice. It’s a series of independent measurements that are giving the same results, which makes it more robust.”. Their study finds that melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet caused a sea-level rise of more than three metres and it took less than 2C of … There is a continent about the size of Australia underneath all this ice; the ice sheet sitting on top averages at a little over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick. Sea ice is mostly frozen seawater, while land ice is frozen freshwater. The WAIS, if it melted completely, would raise sea level by 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 feet). The answer boils down to the fact that ice can flow without melting. Over the 1999-2019 period, more than 2.63 million square kilometers of the Antarctic ice sheet surface had experienced observable melting, which is nearly one-fifth of the total area, said the MOST 2020 annual report of remote sensing monitoring on the global ecological environment. But ice shelves, which are floating sheets of ice connected to a landmass's coasts, melted at an accelerated rate, the report said. But he was clear about what the ‘warning signs’ would be. … “If we lose the summer ice, it makes a big difference,” says Ron Kwok. Holly Shaftel Larger Image The Antarctic ice sheet. Antarctica holds about 90 percent of all ice on land, as well as 70 percent of all the fresh water on Earth, the report said. Instead of a single continent, it is a series of islands covered by ice — think of it as a frozen Hawaii, with penguins. Antarctica has been losing ice mass since at least 2002. Since liquid water is denser than solid ice, enough meltwater on the surface can open the cracks up deeper down into the ice, leading to disintegration of the shelf. Melting all the sea ice on Earth would have no direct effect on sea level, while melting all the land ice would have a huge impact on sea level. And she points out that it isn’t just the Grace data that show accelerating loss; the radar data does, too. Her work shows that the ice sheet is not only losing mass, but it is losing mass at an accelerating rate. Res.Lett. Antarctic sea ice is the sea ice of the Southern Ocean. Gravity data collected from space using NASA’s Grace satellite show that Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002. A longstanding theory in glaciology is that these ice shelves tend to buttress (support the end wall of) glaciers, with their mass slowing the ice movement towards the sea. Two-thirds of Antarctica is a high, cold desert. He said he thought the ice forced the colony to be abandoned, but also suggested that warming temperatures might change things in the years ahead. It extends from the far north in the winter and retreats to almost the coastline every summer, getting closer and closer to the coastline every year due to sea ice melting. Isabella Velicogna of JPL and the University of California, Irvine, uses Grace data to weigh the Antarctic ice sheet from space. Known as East Antarctica, this section has an average altitude of about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles), higher than the American Colorado Plateau. Larger Image Two-thirds of Antarctica is a high, cold desert. 36, L17501 (2009). Because it’s a group of islands, much of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS, in jargon) is actually sitting on the floor of the Southern Ocean, not on dry land. The retreat of West Antarctica’s glaciers is being accelerated by ice shelf collapse. As temperatures rise due to climate change, the melting of polar ice sheets is accelerating. The thinner shelf is also more likely to crack. East Antarctica is much higher in elevation than West Antarctica. The fact that it’s above linear, this is the important idea, that ice loss is increasing with time,” she says. A new scientific study found Antarctica is melting six times faster than 40 years ago. In the "the longest-ever assessment" of Antarctica 's ice mass, scientists are reporting a rapid increase in melting — a six-fold increase in yearly Antarctic ice … They behave very differently. Melting glaciers (land ice) contribute to sea level rise; melting sea ice does not. About 19 percent of the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet had experienced melting during the past two decades, according to a report released Friday by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). Ice shelves are the part of a glacier that extends past the grounding line towards the ocean; they are the most vulnerable to warming seas. Measuring changes in Antarctic land ice mass has been a difficult process due to the ice sheet's massive size and complexity. He attributed the retreat to the warming waters around West Antarctica6. Rothrock, "Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958 - 2008," Geophys. Lett. The eastern half is the big player in this game: it holds 10 times more ice than the West — enough, on its own, to raise sea levels by 170 feet. But with only a few years of data, he couldn’t say whether the retreat was a temporary, natural anomaly or a longer-term trend from global warming. Meanwhile, in rapidly-melting parts of West Antarctica, “upside down rivers” of warm water are gnawing away at the ice shelves’ weak spots from below, according to a … 6 E.J. Science Editor: 2, 859-862 (2009). Historian, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The oceans surrounding Antarctica have been warming10, so Schodlok doesn’t doubt that the ice shelves are being undermined by warmer water being brought up from the depths. An international team of researchers led by geoscientist Dr Kim Jakob from Heidelberg University has now examined the dynamics of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet more closely. 36, L18502 (2009). Last summer, a British group revisited the Pine Island Glacier finding and found that its rate of retreat had quadrupled between 1995 and 20068. But he admits that it hasn’t been proven rigorously, because satellites can’t measure underneath the ice. The small plane takes us to the camp in the middle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet but more bad weather means more delays and it is nine days before a Hercules comes to take us back to McMurdo. Radar- and laser-based satellite data show a little mass loss at the edges of East Antarctica, which is being partly offset by accumulation of snow in the interior, although a very recent result from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) suggests that since 2006 there has been more ice loss from East Antarctica than previously thought5. 10R. The most recent estimate of land ice change that combines estimates from these three approaches reported (IMBIE, 2017) that between 1992 and 2017, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 2,720 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 2,720,000,000,000 tonnes into the oce… Parts of it are more than 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) below sea level. Copyright © 2020 CGTN. Pine Island is the largest of these islands and the largest ice stream in West Antarctica is called Pine Island Glacier. ‘Teetering at the edge’: Scientists warn of rapid melting of Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday glacier’ Thwaites glacier is losing ice at an accelerating rate, threatening catastrophic sea-level rise 1 Marco Tedesco and Andrew J. Monaghan, "An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability," Geophys. JPL scientist Ron Kwok saw it as demonstrating that “the old idea that glaciers move really slowly isn’t true any more.” One result was that a lot more people started to use the radar data to examine much more of Antarctica. According to Bindschadler, Pine Island Glacier “is the place to go because that is where the changes are the largest. If all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meters (197 feet). Climate scientists are interested in Arctic sea ice decline because permanent sea ice (i.e. As temperatures rise due to climate change, the melting of polar ice sheets is accelerating. This dynamic process of ice flowing downhill to the sea is what enables Antarctica to continue losing mass even as surface melting declines. It is of high scientific value for further research on the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet and global climate change, Wang added. But the loss of land ice in Antarctica threatens to raise global sea level, sparking scientists’ interest in the southernmost continent. Res. Credits: NASA's Operation IceBridge Map showing the rates of mass changes from ICESat 2003-2008 over Antarctica. 47, 1-38 (2009). Antarctic sea ice is ice which forms in salt water mostly during winter months. Under a “business as usual” climate scenario, in which carbon emissions continue unabated, it is estimated that the melting of Antarctic ice will cause global sea level to rise up to three times as much as it did in the last century. And the Pine Island Glacier would contribute about 10 percent of that. Over the 1999-2019 period, more than 2.63 million square kilometers of the Antarctic ice sheet surface had experienced observable melting, which is nearly one-fifth of the total area, said the MOST 2020 annual report of remote sensing … Lett. Some of the ice at the Antarctic extends as much as 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep underwater. The continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002. Ten ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have disintegrated since the 1970s, including two spectacular collapses last decade. West Antarctica’s glaciers are in rapid retreat. Melting was mostly distributed on the edge of the Antarctic ice sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula, with an increasing trend. Using radar information collected between 1992 and 1996, oceanographer Eric Rignot, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, found that the Pine Island Glacier’s “grounding line” — the line between the glacier’s floating section and the part of the glacier that rests on the sea floor — had retreated rapidly towards the land. Most ice sheets, particularly those located in the inner parts of the continent, were generally stable from 1999 to 2019. East Antarctica is much higher in elevation than West Antarctica. This was confirmed by the spectacular collapse of the Rhode Island-sized Larsen B shelf along the eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002. This website is produced by the Earth Science Communications Team at, Site Editor: Warming waters caused by climate change will continue to accelerate the melting of … 9 E. Rignot et.al., "Accelerated ice discharge from the Antarctic Peninsula following the collapse of Larsen B ice shelf," Geophys. Res. The Antarctic Peninsula experienced the most severe melting, said the report. Since the early 1990s, European and Canadian satellites have been collecting radar data from West Antarctica. These changes largely result from the geographic differences mentioned above, namely Antarctic sea ice’s distance from the pole (se… “It isn’t just one type of measurement. The Antarctic as a whole contains about 90 percent of the planet’s ice — enough in theory to raise global sea levels an average of roughly 200 feet should it all melt. ... Go back to the melting ice in a glass of water. The continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002. That meant that the glacier was losing mass. Daniel Bailey, Thirty-two years ago, glaciologist John H. Mercer of the Institute of Polar Studies sounded a fire alarm about global warming. Mayewski, et.al., "State of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Climate System," Rev. If all that ice melts, it would raise the global sea level by 58.3 meters. During the period, around 19 percent of Antarctica's area experienced melting. Most ice sheets, particularly those located in the inner parts of the continent, were generally stable from 1999 to 2019. How the ice shelf crumbles Glaciologist Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center intends to show just that. Antarctica’s ice is melting fast. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ IMAGES/ current.anom.south.jpg, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2009/ 04/090421101629.htm, http://nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/ difference.html. Rignot’s paper surprised many people. Previously, Antarctic sea ice extent had been above that long-term average due to long-term, large-scale wind circulation patterns that drove sea ice away from Antarctica 5, making room for more sea ice to form nearer to the continent. Rignot, "Fast Recession of a West Antarctic Glacier, Science 281, 549-551 (1998). There’s very little permanent (summer) sea ice compared to the huge mass of the ice sheet itself, so loss of (or gain of) sea ice in the southern ocean won’t make a big difference to the Earth’s reflectivity (or ‘albedo’). But little, if any, surface warming is occurring over East Antarctica. Antarctic ice sheets could be at greater risk of melting than previously thought by University of South Australia Credit: CC0 Public Domain Lett. Free-floating sea ice gets blown around by the wind, while glaciers move downhill, driven by gravity. Antarctic sea ice had been gradually increasing during 40 years of measurement and reached a record maximum in 2014, before falling markedly. Melting of Antarctic Ice Is Accelerating, Study Shows UN Climate Change News, 18 June 2018 - Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting more rapidly than previously expected, a scientific study published in the scientific research journal Nature has revealed, adding to the sense of urgency to act on climate change and to finalize the implementation guidelines of the Paris Agreement at the end of … How is it possible for surface melting to decrease, but for the continent to lose mass anyway? These charts show just how high sea levels will rise if Antarctica's ice continues melting at an alarming rate. Ice is ice, right? Geosci. Susan Callery Still, areas of the continent, like the Antarctic Peninsula photographed above, have increased their mass loss in the last decades. However, in this case, I really don't have a feeling for the size of the Antarctic ice cap. Science Editor: 7 These long-term … Overall, not much is going on in East Antarctica — yet. Antarctic Ice Melt May Be Worse Than Scientists Thought Antarctica, Petermann Island, Icicles hang from melting iceberg near Lemaire Channel Paul Souders_Getty Images Melting land ice contributes to sea level rise. Managing Editor: The study demonstrates, for the first time, that during this period, changes in the Antarctic ice sheet were driven by the melting ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Randal Jackson 36, L15501 (2009). One new paper 1, which states there has been less surface melting recently than in past years, has been cited as “proof” that there’s no global warming. There has been lots of talk lately about Antarctica and whether or not the continent’s giant ice sheet is melting. This subject analyzes the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of the Antarctic ice sheet surface melting, ice shelf disintegration, and penguin habitat distribution and their correlations, said Wang Qi'an, director of the National Remote Sensing Center of China. These radar data can reveal ice motion and, by the late 1990s, there was enough data for scientists to measure the annual motion of the Pine Island Glacier. According to a 2009 study, the continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and significant at >0.05 °C/decade since 1957. It is predicted that the melting conditions of the Antarctic ice sheet surface will continue to increase, especially in West Antarctica and Antarctic Peninsula. The frozen continent of Antarctica contains the vast majority of all freshwater on Earth. Beijing ICP prepared NO.16065310-3, 19% of Antarctic ice sheet surface melted in past 20 years: report. 31, L18401 (2004). Compared to the Arctic, Antarctic sea ice shows less variability in summer, and more variability in winter. This year's report launched a new subject on changes in the Antarctic ice sheet. The study looked at 176 different basins around Antarctica where ice drains into the ocean and found that the rate of melting is increasing, … In Antarctica, however, it’s the land ice that really counts. Thinning of the ice shelf reduces its buttressing effect on the glacier behind it, allowing glacier flow to speed up. Sea ice waxes and wanes with the seasons, but minimum and maximum extents rarely match from year to year; over years and decades, summer and winter extents vary. M. Robertson et al., “Long term temperature trends in the deep waters of the Weddell Sea”, Deep Sea Research 49, 21, 4791-4806 (2002); http://condor.pems.adfa.edu.au/FD-Course/webpage/longterm.pdf. But both of these data points are misleading. Geophys. 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