The polar regions play a critical role in the global environment. Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers, located in West Antarctica, are two of Antarctica’s fastest glaciers Both flow into the Amundsen Sea. These long thick rivers of ice combined drain about one fifth of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Both glaciers are grounded well below sea level and warm water is carving underwater channels into the underside of the ice shelves. These channels cause the marine extension of the glacier to crack and birth icebergs while weakening any buttressing that they may have provided to keep Antarctica’s land ice from accelerating into the ocean and raising sea levels worldwide by 4 feet. Melting from below the ice makes the glaciers anchored at the bedrock susceptible to instabilities and changing the dynamics of the ice flow making them even more sensitive to changes in a warming world.
x xYouTube VideoThe New York Times writes about, and shares animated images provided by Copernicus Sentinel-1and the French National Center for Scientific Research, that show accelerated ice flow from 2015 to 2017.
This year’s ice calving events at Pine Island and Thwaites have not caused significant changes in the region, because the shifts have been in areas that did not provide critical support to the glaciers.
The movement of the ice, however, offers scientists a window into how Antarctic ice shelves might respond to rapid changes and how a runaway disintegration of the hundreds of Antarctic glaciers might look.
“There isn’t a glacier in Antarctica that comes close to the ice discharge to Pine Island and Thwaites,” Dr. Rignot said. “They are the largest discharger of ice in the Antarctic right now.”
I published a diary a couple of weeks ago, W Antarctica: "rapid and sustained retreat" could soon trigger runaway ice retreat into the interior, and here we are revisiting the same 2 glaciers retreat yet again. Fasten your seatbelts.