Antarctica's vast ice masses seem far away, yet they store enough water to raise global sea levels by several meters. A team of experts from European research institutes has now provided the first systematic stability inspection of the ice sheet's current state.
"With more and more ice being lost in Antarctica over the last years, concerns have been raised whether a tipping point has already been crossed and an irreversible, long-term collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already been initiated," explains Ronja Reese from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Northumbria University, Newcastle.
The main driver of ice loss in West Antarctica is relatively warm ocean water that amplifies melting underneath the ice shelves, which are the floating extensions of the grounded ice sheet. Melting of these ice shelves can enhance ice loss as it speeds up the grounded sections of the ice sheet. That is why the Antarctic margin with its grounding lines -- the zone where the grounded and the floating ice are connected -- is a key indicator of ice sheet health.
"The thing with sea-level rise from Antarctica is not that changes would happen overnight as an immediate threat to coastal communities. The process of melting would happen over hundreds or thousands of years. However, the cause could be human actions today, as they have the power to trigger and commit a future of 10,000 years to several meters of global sea-level rise. And stronger warming in the future would even speed up this process," Julius Garbe from PIK stresses.
Changes in ice discharge from Antarctica remain one of the greatest uncertainties in future projections of global sea-level rise."The Antarctic ice is our ultimate heritage of the past, millions of years old and often coined 'eternal' ice. But our work shows: while current ice loss may still be reversible, a destabilization of marine sectors of the ice sheet could initiate a long-term ice loss that is slow but certain.
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