New PNAS paper highlights increasing fragility of buttressing ice shelves at the mouths of the Pine Island + Thwaites glaciers in Antarctica, further emphasizing the importance of warming-induced positive feedbacks for ice mass loss + sea lvl rise: (1)
pnas.org/content/early/…
Scientists studying Antarctic ice are paying close attention to Thwaites and Pine Island ice shelves, as they are exhibiting some of the fastest changes among West Antarctic glaciers and could drive considerable sea level rise over timescales of a century and beyond. (2)
The Thwaites Glacier is thought to be particularly important to the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a whole, which could be significantly destabilized by its degradation. (3)
washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
Lhermite et al. used satellite images to track signs of damage, namely the dvlpmt of crevasses + fractures, on these ice shelves over 20 yrs of satellite records. They discovered signs of structural weakening that accelerates damage to the ice shelf in a positive feedback. (4)
Downstream ice shelves provide a buttressing or structurally-reinforcing effect on glaciers upstream. The thinning and retreat of floating ice shelves thanks to atmospheric and ocean warming thus destabilizes upstream ice and accelerates seaward flow. (5)
This physical dynamic has been long suspected but is not currently included in ice sheet models used to simulate Thwaites and Pine Island glacier retreat, highlighting the importance of incorporating such feedbacks into modeling work. (6)
As a side note, the paper is open access and features some eye-opening movies of these glaciers flowing seawards and breaking up.
Really impressive to see more multimedia-based data visualization/presentation in papers - science has come a long way. (7)
Ultimately, these findings reinforce what we already knew - that major basins of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are highly vulnerable to climate change and could produce irreversible contributions to sea lvl rise if destabilized. (8 - END)
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