Antarctica’s Once–Stable Coast Is Not So Stable Anymore – Melting Of Glaciers Could Raise Sea Level A Lot
East Antarctica has been usually imagined as stable and steady when compared to West Antarctica. But the thing is that the effects of climate change have been starting to show and East Antarctica’s glaciers are currently trembling and appearing to be losing ice at a faster rate than we ever expected.
There’s a recent NASA study which was presented at Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington, and it has unveiled that a group of glaciers that is covering a massive portion of East Antarctica has been losing ice at a speed that has been never seen before. Over the past 10 years.
“The change doesn’t seem random; it looks systematic,” Alex Gardner, a glaciologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said at the AGU press conference.
“And that systematic nature hints at underlying ocean influences that have been incredibly strong in West Antarctica. Now we might be finding clear links of the ocean starting to influence East Antarctica.”
Sea level could raise more than 3.3 meters
The monolithic Totten Glacier is the main concern at the moment, as reported by IflScience. It has about 6,200 square meters of ice and the melting of this ice shelf alone could raise sea levels by more than 3.3 meters which is 11 feet.
According to this latest research that we mentioned before, it is now steadily retreating due to the warming sea temperatures along with other four large glaciers.
“Totten is the biggest glacier in East Antarctica, so it attracts most of the research focus,” added Catherine Walker, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “But once you start asking what else is happening in this region, it turns out that other nearby glaciers are responding in a similar way to Totten.”
All these findings have been based on detailed images coming from NASA satellites which are tracking the changes in glaciers.
I have been blogging and posting articles for over eight years, but my passion for writing dates back in 2000. I am especially enthusiastic about technology, science, and health-related issues. When I’m not researching and writing the latest news, I’m either watching sci-fi and horror movies or checking out places worth visiting and building deep memories for later in life. I believe in empathy and continually improving myself.
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