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Scientists monitoring ‘doomsday’ glacier in Antarctic warn climate change happening faster than ever before.

Collapse of the Thwaites glacier and its accompanying ice sheet could lead to more than three metres of sea level rise. The British Antarctic Survey is hoping to find out how fast it might collapse

i news, By Daniel Capurro, Environment Correspondent, June 20, 2023 

Antarctica is changing at “a pace that we’ve never seen before” with the potential collapse of key ice sheets threatening three metres of sea level rise in a century, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has warned.

Scientists at the BAS, which is launching a new 10-year strategy, are part of a multinational effort to monitor the Thwaites glacier, which has been dubbed the “doomsday glacier”.

The river of ice has retreated more than eight miles since the 90s and is already responsible for 4 per cent of global sea level rises. Were it to melt entirely, this would cause a rise in the sea level of 65 centimetres.

More worryingly, it is thought to be both the keystone and the “weak underbelly” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

If Thwaites were to pass a tipping point and be lost completely, said the BAS, it could potentially lead other glaciers around it to rapidly disintegrate and eventually to the collapse of the entire ice sheet.

Were that to happen, global sea levels would rise by more than three metres, with Cambridge, the headquarters of the BAS, suddenly finding itself on the edge of saltwater marshes.

“There’s this common perception of sea level changes a few millimetres a year, and therefore we all relaxed thinking what are a few millimetres?” said Dr Dominic Hodgson, head of the Ice Sheets and Climate Change team at the British Antarctic Survey. “But when we look back at the historical record, we can see that in the past when ice sheets melted, they do in very non-linear jumps.”

There are periods of meltwater pulses, where essentially an ice sheet collapses and the sea level rises by several metres in the 100 years or so. It’s really rapid.”

BAS scientists are now racing to understand the composition of the bedrock beneath the glacier. Depending on how hard or soft it is could affect whether the glacier takes just five years to disappear or 500, although Dr Alex Brisbourne, who is part of the bedrock team, said the worst-case scenarios already appeared unlikely.

Even without such a collapse, the picture from the Polar regions is a troubling one. “We’ve seen extreme temperatures in Antarctica in the last couple of years, over 20°C, which is completely unsustainable for keeping ice,” said Dr Hodgson.

“We’ve got serious problems happening, starting in the polar regions and spreading out to the rest of the planet that we have to address now,” he said………….
more https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/scientists-racing-doomsday-glacier-change-faster-ever-2422082

June 22, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ANTARCTICA, climate change