(New York) Scientists are heading to one of the most inaccessible places on earth to better understand the impact that melting Antarctic ice will have on rising sea levels.
Thirty-two researchers embarked on a mission lasting more than two months aboard an American science vessel on Thursday to study the area where the glacier faces the Amundsen Sea, and where it could potentially drop large amounts of ice. due to the warming of the water.
This glacier, which is the size of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Apocalypse Glacier” because of the enormous amounts of ice it contains. If all that ice melted, the sea level could rise by 65 centimeters over several centuries.
Because of its importance, the UK and US have launched a $ 50 million mission to study the Thwaites Glacier, the world’s largest on land and in the sea. Far from all research stations Mainland, Thwaites is in the western part of Antarctica, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, which was once the area of most concern to researchers.
PHOTO BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY VIA ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
This photo released in 2019 by the British Antarctic Survey shows a hole in the Thwaites Glacier, in Antarctica. The Thwaites Ice Shelf is strewn with hundreds of fractures, like a damaged windshield.
“I would say Thwaites is the main reason why there is so much uncertainty about future sea level rise, because he is in a very remote and hard to reach corner,” Anna said Wednesday. Wahlin, an oceanographer at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Mme Wahlin was joined aboard the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, which was due to leave a Chilean port over the next few hours. “Its setup makes it potentially unstable, and that’s what worries us,” she said.
Thwaites sends about 50 billion tonnes of ice into the water each year. The British Antarctic Survey agency calculates that the glacier is responsible for 4% of the global rise in ocean levels, and that the conditions that cause it to lose even more ice are accelerating, warned Ted Scambos, a glaciologist with the University of Colorado which is based at the McMurdo Ground Station.
Oregon State University glaciologist Erin Pettit clarified that Thwaites appears to be collapsing in three ways:
Melting caused by sea water
The land portion of the glacier appears to “lose its grip” where it is attached to the ocean floor. A large portion could therefore fall into the sea and possibly melt.
PHOTO BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY VIA ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Thwaites Glacier, which is the size of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Apocalypse Glacier” because of the enormous amounts of ice it contains. If all of this ice melted, the sea level could rise by 65 centimeters over several centuries.
The Thwaites Ice Shelf is strewn with hundreds of fractures, like a damaged windshield. This is what worries M mostme Pettit, who specifies that cracks ten kilometers long have appeared in just one year.
No one has ever set foot on Thwaites’ crucial ice-sea interface before. In 2019, Mme Wahlin was aboard a ship that explored the area with a robot deployed from a ship, but she did not set foot ashore.
This time the team of Mme Wahlin will use two robotic ships to dive below Thwaites and examine the part of the glacier that overlooks the ocean.
Scientists will measure the temperature of the water, inspect the ocean floor, and measure the thickness of the ice. They will examine the cracks in the ice and the way the ice is structured. They will also tag seals on the islands off the glacier.
Thwaites “looks different from other ice shelves,” M said.me Wahlin.
“It almost looks like a pile of icebergs that have been compacted together,” she said. So it is more and more evident that it is not a single piece of solid ice like other ice shelves, which is a nice uniform ice. It’s much more fragmented and scarred. ”