Extraordinary Thinning' of Ice Sheets Revealed Deep Inside Antarctica

Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets
revealed deep inside Antarctica

New research shows affected areas are losing ice five times faster than in
the 1990s, with more than 100m of thickness gone in some places
Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor
@dpcarrington
Thu 16 May 2019 09.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 16 May 2019 23.40 BST
The Antarctic’s Thwaites glacier. More than 50% of the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins
have been affected by thinning in the past 25 years. Photograph: PA
Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of
satellite data shows.
The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea
increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The
West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now
thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.
A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about
five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world. The current losses are doubling
every decade, the scientists said, and sea level rise are now running at the extreme end
of projections made just a few years ago.
The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, compared 800m
satellite measurements of ice sheet height from 1992 to 2017 with weather information.
This distinguished short-term changes owing to varying snowfall from long-term
changes owing to climate.
“From a standing start in the 1990s, thinning has spread inland progressively over the
past 25 years – that is rapid in glaciological terms,” said Prof Andy Shepherd, of Leeds
University in the UK, who led the study. “The speed of drawing down ice from an ice
sheet used to be spoken of in geological timescales, but that has now been replaced by
people’s lifetimes.”
He said the thinning of some ice streams had extended 300 miles inland along their
600-mile length. “More than 50% of the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins have
been affected by thinning in the past 25 years. We are past halfway and that is a worry.”
Researchers already knew that ice was being lost from West Antarctica, but the new
work pinpoints where it is happening and how rapidly. This will enable more accurate
projections to be made of sea level rises and may aid preparations for these rises.
In the recent past, snow falling on to Antarctica’s glaciers balanced the ice lost as
icebergs calved off into the ocean. But now the glaciers are flowing faster than snow can
replenish them.
“Along a 3,000km [1,850-mile] stretch of West Antarctica, the water in front of the
glaciers is too hot,” he said. This causes melting of the underside of the glaciers where
they grind against the seabed. The melting lessens the friction and allows the glaciers
then to slide more quickly into the ocean and therefore become thinner.
“In parts of Antarctica, the ice sheet has thinned by extraordinary amounts,” Shepherd
said.
Separate research published in January found that ice loss from the entire Antarctic
continent had increased six-fold since the 1980s, with the biggest losses in the west. The
new study indicates West Antarctica has caused 5mm of sea level rise since 1992,
consistent with the January study’s findings.
The expansion of the oceans as they warm and the vast melting in Greenland are the
main current causes of the rising oceans, but Antarctica is the biggest store of ice. The
East Antarctic ice sheet contains enough ice to raise sea levels by about 60 metres. It
had been considered stable, but research in December found even this stronghold
was showing signs of melting.
Without rapid cuts in the carbon emissions driving global warming, the melting and
rising sea level will continue for thousands of years.
“Before we had useful satellite measurements from space, most glaciologists thought the
polar ice sheets were pretty isolated from climate change and didn’t change rapidly at
all,” Shepherd said. “Now we know that is not true.”

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Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets

revealed deep inside Antarctica

Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor

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