![]() ![]() Coupled with the thinning of the glacier and its faster flow, “this is one expression of the fact that Thwaites Glacier is putting more and more ice into the ocean.” “It's another step in the retreat,” Larter said. But it is a sign of the glacier’s instability. The massive blowout of icebergs won’t itself change sea levels, as the ice that fractured off deep into the ice shelf had already been floating. This winter’s expedition aboard the Palmer marked the first field season of a five-year, international research collaboration to discover just how much, and how fast, Thwaites Glacier might add to rising seas. Part 6: For this marine tech, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier drives home threat of climate change.Part 5: These scientists used small explosions to 'see' under Antarctica and measure how fast a key glacier will melt. ![]() Part 4: These high-tech seals are charting future sea level rise | How can a seal track climate change?.Part 3: On a journey to Antarctica, a New Orleans chef awakens to the threat of melting ice.Part 2: This submarine’s historic tour under Thwaites Glacier will help scientists predict sea level rise.Part 1: Is Thwaites Glacier doomed? Scientists race against time to find out. ![]() Cutting carbon pollution presents the only path forward to stave off the worst impacts of a melting Antarctic.This is the last in a series, Into the Thaw: Decoding Thwaites Glacier. Other part of Antarctica from the peninsula to East Antarctica are also in danger of slowly melting out and raising sea levels. Some research has indicated that the melt of these glaciers is unstoppable, though their disappearance won’t necessarily happen overnight. Their failure would send that ice to the ocean, pushing sea levels up to 13 feet higher than they are today. The glaciers and ice shelves help hold back a massive ice sheet on land. It’s not time to put the glacier and its ice shelf on death watch like the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, but it’s ice that researchers plan to monitor closely in the coming years. Since 1992, Pine Island and some of its glacial brethren in West Antarctica have seen the fastest grounding line retreat of any glaciers on the continent.Ĭracks have formed elsewhere on Pine Island Glacier including about six miles inland from the calving front, according to NASA. That’s causing the ice shelf to melt and pushing the grounding line - the point where the ice begins to float - back toward land, creating further instability. The ocean under Pine Island Glacier’s ice shelf has warmed about 1☏ since the 1990s. That the recent rifting and calving could totally be evidence of an ongoing, rapid disintegration of the ice shelf, mostly due to ocean next iceberg is coming! /DTxC7UTesD- Simon Gascoin February 15, 2017 In an email, he said that it’s hard to tie these individual events to climate change, but “many studies have shown that Pine Island Glacier is retreating and thinning. Simon Gascoin, an ice and remote sensing expert at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, noted on Twitter that another crack could be seen just inland from where the iceberg calved off, raising the possibility of another calving event. RELATED Large Iceberg Poised to Break Off From Antarctica Antarctica’s Icy ‘Doorstops’ Thin Rising Seas At Risk East Antarctica is Melting From Above and Below The iceberg was roughly “only” the size of Manhattan, underscoring just how dramatic the other breakups have been. Satellite imagery captured the most recent calving event, which Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat said “ is the equivalent of an ‘aftershock’” following the July 2015 event. And in January, another iceberg cleaved off the glacier. Scientists subsequently spotted cracks in the glacier on a November 2016 flyover. A massive iceberg roughly 225 square miles in size - or in more familiar terms, 10 times the size of Manhattan - broke off in July 2015. The Pine Island Glacier on the coast of West Antarctica is a case in point. Ice around the continent is disappearing as the air and water heat up and the less dramatic breakdowns are just as important to understanding the fate of the ice and the world’s coastal areas.īefore and after satellite imagery show an iceberg breaking off the calving front of the Pine Island Glacier. But it isn’t the continent’s only frozen feature changing in a warming world. Follow growing crack in the Larsen C ice shelf is the most dramatic example of change in Antarctica right now. ![]()
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