Jun 26, 2024 02:52 PM
https://www.splinter.com/add-a-new-ice-s...nightmares
INTRO: The ice sheets are already scary. Greenland could be doomed with only a few fractions of a degree more warming. Antarctica’s ice shelves, the floating extensions of the ice sheet that help hold it back from falling in the sea, are facing “unavoidable” destruction. There is something called a “Doomsday Glacier,” and it isn’t doing great.
And now, more bad news: a study from the British Antarctic Survey finds a new tipping point in the ice sheet system, involving the “grounding zone” where floating ice and bedrock-based ice meet. Short version: projections of melting and subsequent sea level may yet still be underestimated.
The longer version is that the researchers, Alexander Bradley and Ian Hewitt, developed a model to estimate the effects of groundwater intrusion underneath the ice sheet, and the feedback loops between that water and melting of the ice above it. The results were ugly. They found that “as the grounding zone widens in response to melting, both temperature and flow velocity in the region increase, further enhancing melting.”
In other words, melting induces faster melting... (MORE - details)
INTRO: The ice sheets are already scary. Greenland could be doomed with only a few fractions of a degree more warming. Antarctica’s ice shelves, the floating extensions of the ice sheet that help hold it back from falling in the sea, are facing “unavoidable” destruction. There is something called a “Doomsday Glacier,” and it isn’t doing great.
And now, more bad news: a study from the British Antarctic Survey finds a new tipping point in the ice sheet system, involving the “grounding zone” where floating ice and bedrock-based ice meet. Short version: projections of melting and subsequent sea level may yet still be underestimated.
The longer version is that the researchers, Alexander Bradley and Ian Hewitt, developed a model to estimate the effects of groundwater intrusion underneath the ice sheet, and the feedback loops between that water and melting of the ice above it. The results were ugly. They found that “as the grounding zone widens in response to melting, both temperature and flow velocity in the region increase, further enhancing melting.”
In other words, melting induces faster melting... (MORE - details)