“As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do or must believe about the rising threat of climate change. But we consider it to be our responsibility as professionals to ensure, to the best of our ability, that people understand what we know: human-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes, and responding now will lower the risk and cost of taking action.” warned the American Association for the Advancement of Science in a 2016 report
Despite what the fossil fuel industry, as well as climate science deniers and their enablers in the executive and legislative branches of the US Government think, human-caused climate change is real. And, so are the chances that abrupt and irreversible climate changes will have devastating impacts on the world within years or decades. So it is astonishing to read that the United States will join the UK to study the “cork” that holds back one of the most doomed and unstable glaciers on the planet.
These corks, or plugs, can be found throughout West Antarctica where the great marine ice platforms hold back the massive inland ice sheets from flowing downward into the sea, raising sea levels by as much 22 feet and polluting coastal freshwater sources across the planet. Warm upwelling ocean water, driven by global warming enhanced wind currents, carves into and rots the ice shelves from below, thinning and cracking the ice resulting in more frequent icebergs. Whatever resistance those icebergs had provided in corking the inland ice is now gone. NASA IceBridge scientists say that calving is part of the natural process by which glaciers flow to the sea. But the natural calving process has, over geologic time, created massive tabular icebergs. Now the ice shelves are shedding smaller shattered icebergs instead, alarming climate scientists. In other words the plugs have begun to crumble and what was expected not to occur for perhaps hundreds of years are now occurring this century.
The Guardian reports that over 100 scientists, in a welcome sign of international cooperation, will collaborate on a “five-year project to examine the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica, a major structure that drains an area about the size of the UK”.
A hat tip to the “deep state” , who has successfully implemented American participation with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. This despite the radically unhinged environmental policies of the Trump administration. Apparently, creating chaos and distraction can work both ways.
In this image, bright icebergs spread across Pine Island Bay, resembling shards of broken glass. The bergs appear to be crumbling off Thwaites Glacier, a small part of which is visible on the right edge of the image. Thwaites and its neighbor, Pine Island Glacier, are the fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica.Scott Borg, deputy assistant director of the US National Science Foundation, said the expedition was of global significance. “This is critically important to all of us, no matter where we live. What happens in the Antarctic does not stay in the Antarctic. We do not know how quickly [the glacier] will contribute to sea level rises, and whether we have decades or centuries to prepare for it.”
He warned of possible changes to global ocean circulation, as well as sea-level rises, that could result from more rapid melting. Scientists have grown increasingly concerned over the effect of melting ice, from the polar ice caps and glaciers on land, on global ocean currents, with a recent study showing the Atlantic’s gulf stream at its weakest for 1,600 years.In a nod to climate sceptics in the US, Borg said: “Some people say this is expensive. But our coastal cities and economies are at stake.”
He called the five-year project, to begin this October, “international cooperation at its best, and in keeping with the Antarctic treaty” that would “yield unprecedented understanding of the future of this critical part of Antarctica”.
Science Daily expands on The Guardian story.
According to The Guardian, ice from Thwaites streaming into the ocean accounted for about 4 percent of total global sea level rise in recent years — twice its contribution from the mid-1990s. That's a significant amount of water coming off of one glacier. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that, globally, sea level has risen about 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) above the 1993 average, and it continues to rise by about one-eighth of an inch (3.2 millimeters) per year. Studying Thwaites, the scientists hope, could help them figure out how much worse the situation is going to get.
Glaciers like Thwaites matter a great deal to sea level for a simple reason: They're large masses of landlocked ice that hold back even larger masses of ice, keeping them from sliding into the sea.
Landlocked ice changes sea level because when it melts, it introduces new water to the ocean, and this water isn't likely to leave the ocean anytime soon. Sea ice, on the other hand, like the ice cap in the Arctic, can have major effects on climate when it melts. But it's fundamentally water that's already in the ocean. Whether it's liquid or solid doesn't directly affect sea level around the world.
But Thwaites and its ilk are the main feeders of water mass driving sea level rise. And as scientists have studied these ice masses, they've only discovered more signs of how bad the situation is — and how bad it could get. Back in 2013, for example, scientists found "swamp-like waterways" under Thwaites that strip away its ice mass and lubricate it against the ground, accelerating its rush toward the sea.