West Antarctic Ice Slipping Away
CBC Radio | Posted: May 17, 2014 4:00 AM | Last Updated: May 17, 2014
Erosion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have passed the point of no return.
Thanks to climate change, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have passed a critical tipping point and will inevitably collapse, in perhaps as little as hundreds of years. According to new research by two groups, one led by Dr. Ian Joughin, a glaciologist in the Polar Science Center of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle, warm deep-sea water, driven by shifting climate patterns around Antarctica, has undermined two of the glaciers that make up the ice sheet. The glaciers have begun a slow, and likely irreversible collapse that will eventually lead to loss of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet makes up nearly 10% of the world's ice, and if - or when - it collapses and melts into the sea, will raise global sea level by more than three meters.
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