Shifting winds and ocean currents are pushing warm waters into East Antarctica, contributing to ice loss, an analysis finds.
Scientists say that the research, published inon 2 August, also helps to resolve one of the largest uncertainties in projections of future sea-level rise: how vulnerable the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the world’s largest, is to ocean warming.
Ice shelves float on the ocean, extending from and buttressing continental glaciers that amass to form ice sheets. Unlike ice masses in West Antarctica, which are melting at a staggering rate, the East Antarctic ice sheet was thought to be sheltered from ocean warming by cold, dense seawater that forms on the continental shelf, near ice shelves.
But over the past ten years, data and observations have shown that the East Antarctic ice sheet, too, is under increasing threat from warm salty water, which is melting ice shelves from beneath. Yet past studies have struggled to measure the extent of the warming and pinpoint the processes driving it.
The pair found that ocean temperatures in East Antarctica have risen by up to 2 ℃ since the early twentieth century, and the trend is accelerating. The rate of ocean warming in the region has tripled since the 1990s, they found, with the strongest warming occurring over the East Antarctic continental slope — near the glaciers whose protruding ice shelves have thinned or retreated most rapidly. Among these are the Denman, Vanderford and Totten glaciers.
Previous studies, which have recorded snapshots of warming at specific locations such as close to the Totten Glacier and Amery Ice Shelf
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