For almost a decade, climate scientists have been trying to get their heads around a particularly disastrous scenario for how West Antarctica’s gigantic ice sheet might break apart, bringing catastrophe to the world’s coasts.
It goes like this: Once enough of the ice sheet’s floating edges melt away, what remains are immense, sheer cliffs of ice facing the sea.
Great chunks of ice start breaking away from them, exposing even taller, even more-unstable cliffs.
Now, though, a group of researchers has put forth evidence that the prospect may be more remote than previously thought.
As humans burn fossil fuels and heat the planet, West Antarctica’s ice remains vulnerable to destruction in many forms.
But this particular form, in which ice cliffs collapse one after the other, looks less likely, according to the scientists’ computer simulations.
“The Antarctic ice sheet is going to disappear; this is going to happen.
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The massive ice sheet in West Antarctica could break apart, wreaking havoc on the world’s coasts, and climate scientists have been trying to comprehend this particularly dire scenario for the past nine years.
This is how it happens: Massive, sheer ice cliffs facing the sea are left behind when enough of the ice sheet’s floating edges melt away. These cliffs will be unstable due to their height and steepness. Greater and more unstable cliffs are revealed as massive blocks of ice begin to break away from them. These begin to collapse soon after, and soon you have a runaway collapse.
Antarctica may contribute more than one foot to global sea level rise by the end of the century as a result of all this ice melting and rising greenhouse gas emissions from other countries.
Scientists have taken this disastrous sequence of events seriously enough to include it as a “low-likelihood, high-impact” possibility in the United Nations’ most recent assessment of future sea-level rise, even though it is still totally hypothetical.
However, recent research has presented evidence suggesting that the prospect may not be as likely as previously believed. The ice in West Antarctica is still susceptible to various forms of destruction as a result of human activity involving the burning of fossil fuels and global warming. However, the scientists’ computer simulations indicate that this specific form, in which ice cliffs collapse sequentially, appears less likely.
Leader of the research, Dartmouth College earth science professor Mathieu Morlighem, stated, “We’re not saying that we’re safe.”. This is what is going to happen: the Antarctic ice sheet will vanish. The speed is the question. “.
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