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May 2021

Global heating pace risks ‘unstoppable’ sea level rise as Antarctic ice sheet melts

World faces ‘abrupt jump’ in pace of ice loss around 2060 unless emissions reduced to meet Paris agreement goals, (another) study warns

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/05/antarctica-ice-sheet-melting-global-heating-sea-level-rise-study

Findings

- The current pace of global heating risks unleashing “rapid and unstoppable” sea level rise from the melting of Antarctica’s vast ice sheet

- Unless planet-heating emissions are swiftly reduced to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the world faces a situation where there is an “abrupt jump” in the pace of Antarctic ice loss around 2060

“Once you put enough heat into the climate system, you are going to lose those ice shelves, and once that is set in motion you can’t reverse it. The oceans would have to cool back down before the ice sheet could heal, which would take a very long time. On a societal timescale it would essentially be a permanent change... It’s really the next few decades that will determine the sea level rise from Antarctica. These ice shelves won’t be able to just grow back.” -- Robert DeConto, University of Massachusetts

Antarctic ‘doomsday glacier’ may be melting faster than was thought

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/30/antarctic-doomsday-glacier-may-be-melting-faster-than-was-thought

The fate of Thwaites – nicknamed the doomsday glacier – and the massive west Antarctic ice sheet it supports are the biggest unknown factors in future global sea level rise.

Over the past few years, teams of scientists have been crisscrossing the remote and inaccessible region on Antarctica’s western edge to try to understand how fast the ice is melting and what the consequences for the rest of the world might be.

“What happens in west Antarctica is of great societal importance,” said Dr Robert Larter, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and principal investigator with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, the most ambitious research project ever carried out in Antarctica. “This is the biggest uncertainty in future sea level rise.”

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