Scientists in Antarctica have recorded, for the first time, unusually warm water beneath a glacier the size of Florida that is already melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels.
An international team of scientists is ready to lower a robotic submarine into a dark, water-filled cavern in Antarctica, to try to find out why one of the continent's largest glaciers is melting so fast.
Irvine -
The rapidly melting West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in an irreversible state of decline according to the latest NASA study. As a result, the "ice-dam" preventing glaciers in the area melting into the sea will ultimately disappear.
Ice melt at the grounding line contributes to seawater and thus sea levels, but the larger effect is to send more ice above it out into the water, where it also drives up sea level. When sea bottom behind the grounding line, under the ice, slopes downward going inland, it exacerbates the process, which can become unstable, perpetually pushing ice out to sea.
AntargticGlaciers.org.
Icefin image of sediments and rock in the ice at the grounding zone of Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica.
