West Antarctica is undergoing rapid changes associated with both atmospheric and oceanic warming. This atmospheric warming, coupled with increased ocean temperature along the West Antarctic Peninsula, has led to glacier retreat along the coast.
Scientists at Caltech and JPL have developed a new model suggesting that Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate, which could eventually contribute to a more rapid sea level rise.
Their model considers an often-overlooked narrow ocean current along the Antarctic coast. It simulates how rapidly flowing freshwater, melted from the ice shelves, can trap dense, warm ocean water at the base of the ice, causing it to warm and melt even more.
Andy Thompson, professor of environmental science and engineering, said, “If this mechanism that we’ve been studying is active in the real world, it may mean that ice shelf melt rates are 20 to 40 percent higher than the predictions in global climate models, which typically cannot simulate these strong currents near the Antarctic coast.”
Scientists mainly focused on West Antarctic Peninsula. The team has previously deployed autonomous vehicles in this region, and scientists have used data from instrumented elephant seals to measure temperature and salinity in the water and ice.
The model considers the narrow Antarctic Coastal Current that runs counterclockwise around the entire Antarctic continent, a current that many climate models do not include because it is so small.
Senior research scientist Mar Flexas said, “Large global climate models don’t include this coastal current because it’s very narrow—only about 20 kilometers wide, while most climate models only capture currents that are 100 kilometers across or larger. So, there is a potential for those models do not represent future melt rates very accurately.”
The model shows how the coastal current carries freshwater from the WAP’s ice melt as it travels across the continent. Less thick freshwater travels swiftly close to the ocean’s surface and traps relatively warm ocean seawater against the underside of ice shelves. After that, the ice shelves start to melt from below.
In this method, more meltwater from the WAP can spread global warming across the Coastal Current, which can speed up melting even at West Antarctic ice shelves thousands of kilometres away from the peninsula. The rapid volume loss from West Antarctic ice shelves in recent decades may be partially explained by this remote warming mechanism.
Thompson said, “There are aspects of the climate system that we are still discovering. As we’ve progressed in our ability to model interactions between the ocean, ice shelves, and atmosphere, we can make more accurate predictions with better constraints on uncertainty. We may need to revisit some of the predictions of sea level rise in the next decades or century—that’s work we’ll do going forward.”
Journal Reference:
- M. Mar Flexas, Andrew F. Thompson et al. Antarctic Peninsula warming triggers enhanced basal melt rates throughout West Antarctica. Science Advances. vol 8, Issue 32. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj9134
Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate & Latest News Update
Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate & More Live News
All this news that I have made and shared for you people, you will like it very much and in it we keep bringing topics for you people like every time so that you keep getting news information like trending topics and you It is our goal to be able to get
all kinds of news without going through us so that we can reach you the latest and best news for free so that you can move ahead further by getting the information of that news together with you. Later on, we will continue
to give information about more today world news update types of latest news through posts on our website so that you always keep moving forward in that news and whatever kind of information will be there, it will definitely be conveyed to you people.
Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate & More News Today
All this news that I have brought up to you or will be the most different and best news that you people are not going to get anywhere, along with the information Trending News, Breaking News, Health News, Science News, Sports News, Entertainment News, Technology News, Business News, World News of this made available to all of you so that you are always connected with the news, stay ahead in the matter and keep getting today news all types of news for free till today so that you can get the news by getting it. Always take two steps forward
Credit Goes To News Website – This Original Content Owner News Website . This Is Not My Content So If You Want To Read Original Content You Can Follow Below Links