World’s biggest ice shelf melting ’10 times faster than expected’ as slab the size of FRANCE risks sparking sea level catastrophe
The ice shelf is 100 times larger than ice shelves that have already disappeared but is experiencing the same decline
RECORDS levels of melting are occurring at the world's largest ice shelf, making it disappear 10 times faster than expected.
Recent research has found that the ice shelf is more vulnerable to global warming that previously thought and is being negatively impacted by the warming sea around it.
The Ross Ice Shelf is a floating slab of ice the size of France, which is located in Antarctica fairly close to the South Pole.
Ice shelves act as barriers that stop glaciers transporting lots of water to the ocean and this is necessarily to stop drastic sea level rising.
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge collected four years worth of data from the area by boring small holes into the ice and testing things like temperature and melt rate.
They also used a radar to measure the thickness of the ice.
Rising sea levels – what's the problem?
Here's what you need to know...
- The global sea level has been gradually rising over the past century
- Sea levels rise due to two main reasons
- The first is thermal expansion – as water gets warmer, it expands
- The second is melting ice on land, adding fresh water into seas
- This has a cyclical effect, because melting ice also warms up the planet (and oceans), causing more even ice to melt and boosting thermal expansion
- It's currently rising at a rate of around 0.3cm per year
- The sea is huge, so that might sound harmless
- But rising sea levels can have a devastating effect over time
- Low-lying coastal areas can disappear completely, even putting areas of the UK at risk
- It can also mean sea storms and tsunamis can have a more devastating effect, reaching further in-land than they would have previously
- There's also an increased risk of flooding
The researchers found that the surface water of the sea surrounding the ice shelf would get so warm in the summer that melting rates would almost triple.
Dr Craig Stewart was one of the scientists who took part in the research and he observed: "Climate change is likely to result in less sea ice, and higher surface ocean temperatures in the Ross Sea, suggesting that melt rates in this region will increase in the future."
Dr Poul Christoffersen from the Cambridge Centre for Climate Science told us: "The observations we made show that melting in a small corner of the ice shelf is much higher (ten times) than the overall ice shelf average.
"The high melt rates are important because they occur in an area where the ice shelf is pinned down and stabilised by Ross Island. High melting in an area that is critical for stability shows that the ice shelf is more vulnerable that we thought so far.
"While we still think the ice shelf is stable, the new findings show that a critical pinning point could be lost if basal melting increases further."
Christoffersen also noted that the ice shelf melting alone won't contribute to drastic sea level rising but the water it is holding back from the sea will.
He said: "Ice shelves float on the ocean, which means that their disappearance doesn’t directly influence global sea level because the ice has already displaced the water.
"Sea level rise from ice occur when land based ice is transferred to the ocean. However, we know that ice shelves have a stabilising effect on the inland ice sheet, and that the glaciers flowing into them accelerate significantly when ice shelves disappear.
"If the Ross Ice Shelf were to disappear, the consequences would be disastrous because there are so many glaciers flowing into, and they are large glaciers as well. That said, please note that the new study does not show that the ice shelf is unstable, it has identified a vulnerability that could lead to it becoming unstable."
The researchers also pointed out that the Ross Ice Shelf is 100 times larger than ice shelves that have already melted away.
This research has been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.
Rising sea levels could drown coastal and in-land areas around the world and melting Arctic ice would add significant amounts of water to the ocean, which would put areas that lie below sea level at risk of flooding.
The 2017 National Climate Assessment found that a rise of 2.4 metres is possible by 2100 and a 2015 study published in Science Advances suggests that if the entire Antarctic ice sheet melted sea levels could rise by as much as 58 metres.
However, this is almost impossible in our lifetimes.
When it comes to the UK, East Anglia could be affected the most severely because it's low-lying, and near the coast.
Even with a one-metre rise areas of Norfolk are inundated with water.
A simulator flood app called FireTree Flood suggests that a 60 metre sea level rise would leave all of Norfolk underwater, as well as large areas of the North East.
In other news, global warming could cause £54trillion in damage as heat melts Arctic permafrost.
Another recent permafrost study found that diseases laying dormant in ancient ice could soon be unleashed due to climate change.
And, scientists have warned that two thirds of ice in the Alps will melt by 2100.
Are you worried about rising sea levels? Let us know in the comments...
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