The logo for the Daily Beast's Obsessed website. It reads: 'Obsessed: What to Watch, Binge, See, & Skip'
DAILY BEAST
Membership call to action crossword iconCrosswordNewsletters
  • Cheat Sheet
  • Obsessed
  • Politics
  • Crime
  • Entertainment
  • Media
  • Innovation
  • Opinion
  • Reality TV
  • U.S. News
  • Scouted
CHEAT SHEET
    POLITICS
    • Biden World
    • Elections
    • Opinion
    • National Security
    • Congress
    • Pay Dirt
    • The New Abnormal
    • Trumpland
    MEDIA
    • Confider
    • Daytime Talk
    • Late-Night
    • Fox News
    U.S. NEWS
    • Identities
    • Crime
    • Race
    • LGBT
    • Extremism
    • Coronavirus
    WORLD
    • Russia
    • Europe
    • China
    • Middle East
    INNOVATION
    • Science
    TRAVEL
      ENTERTAINMENT
      • TV
      • Movies
      • Music
      • Comedy
      • Sports
      • Sex
      • TDB's Obsessed
      • Awards Shows
      • The Last Laugh
      CULTURE
      • Power Trip
      • Fashion
      • Books
      • Royalist
      TECH
      • Disinformation
      SCOUTED
      • Clothing
      • Technology
      • Beauty
      • Home
      • Pets
      • Kitchen
      • Fitness
      • I'm Looking For
      BEST PICKS
      • Best VPNs
      • Best Gaming PCs
      • Best Air Fryers
      COUPONS
      • Vistaprint Coupons
      • Ulta Coupons
      • Office Depot Coupons
      • Adidas Promo Codes
      • Walmart Promo Codes
      • H&M Coupons
      • Spanx Promo Codes
      • StubHub Promo Codes
      Products
      NewslettersPodcastsCrosswordsSubscription
      FOLLOW US
      GOT A TIP?

      SEARCH

      HOMEPAGE
      Sciencesubvertical orientation badge

      How Freaked Out Should We Be About That Antarctica Ice-Shelf Collapse?

      ‘TOTAL DISINTEGRATION’

      Collapses suggest that some underlying conditions, such as ocean and atmosphere temperatures, are changing.

      The Conversation

      The Conversation

      Updated Mar. 28, 2022 6:34PM EDT / Published Mar. 28, 2022 11:04AM EDT 

      NASA via Reuters

      By Hilmar Gudmundsson, Adrian Jenkins, and Bertie Miles

      East Antarctica’s Conger ice shelf—a floating platform the size of Rome—broke off the continent on March 15, 2022. Since the beginning of satellite observations in the 1970s, the tip of the shelf had been disintegrating into icebergs in a series of what glaciologists call calving events.

      Conger was already reduced to a 50km-long and 20km-wide strip attached to Antarctica’s vast continental ice sheet at one end and the ice-covered Bowman Island at the other. Two calving events on March 5 and 7 reduced it further, detaching it from Bowman and precipitating its final collapse a week later.

      The world’s largest ice shelves fringe Antarctica, extending its ice sheet into the frigid Southern Ocean. Smaller ice shelves are found where continental ice meets the sea in Greenland, northern Canada, and the Russian Arctic. By restraining how much the grounded ice flows upstream, they can control the loss of ice from the interior of the sheet into the ocean. When an ice shelf like Conger is lost, the grounded ice once kept behind the shelf may start to flow faster as the restraining force of the ice shelf is lost, resulting in more ice tumbling into the ocean.

      What caused the collapse?

      Ice shelves are sometimes referred to as the “safety band” of Antarctica because they buttress the upstream flow of ice from the bordering ice sheet. Little of the Antarctic ice sheet melts at its surface, where snow piles up. Instead, most of the continent loses ice through calving and melting along the underside of the floating ice shelves.

      The breaking and detachment of parts of ice shelves is a natural process: ice shelves generally go through cycles of slow growth punctuated by isolated calving events. But in recent decades, scientists have seen several large ice shelves undergoing total disintegration.

      Along the Antarctic Peninsula, the whip-like landmass that extends from the West Antarctic mainland, these include Prince Gustav ice shelf (from 1989 to 1995), Larsen A ice shelf (1995), Larsen B (2002), and Wilkins ice shelf (2008 to 2009). In East Antarctica, where Conger once was, Cook ice shelf was partially lost in the '70s. Taken together, this series of collapses suggests that some underlying environmental conditions, such as ocean and atmosphere temperatures, are changing.

      It is too soon to say what triggered the collapse of the Conger ice shelf, but it appears unlikely to have been caused by melting at the surface—there are no indications of any ponds atop the ice shelf. The most recent sequence of events also preceded the record high air temperatures recorded in Antarctica on March 18.

      What the future holds

      As glaciologists, we see the impact of global warming on Antarctica in increasing ice loss with time. And what happens in Antarctica does not stay in Antarctica.

      The consequences of the Conger ice shelf collapse are unlikely to be of global significance as the catchment area feeding ice into the former shelf is small. And due to its shape, the Conger ice shelf was most likely not a significant buttress to the flow of ice upstream.

      But global warming is making events like this more likely. And as more and more ice shelves around Antarctica collapse, ice loss will increase, and with it global sea levels. There is enough ice in the West Antarctic ice sheet to raise sea levels by several meters, and if East Antarctica starts losing significant amounts of ice, the impact on sea levels could be measured in tens of meters.

      Not everything that happens in nature is due to global warming alone. Antarctica loses mass through the discharge of icebergs and waxing and waning ice shelves as part of a natural cycle. But what we are seeing now, with the collapse of the Conger ice shelf and others, is the continuation of a worrying trend whereby Antarctic ice shelves undergo area-wide collapse one after another.

      Hilmar Gudmundsson is a professor of glaciology, and Adrian Jenkins is a professor of ocean science at Northumbria University, Newcastle; Bertie Miles is a Leverhulme early career fellow in geosciences at the University of Edinburgh

      The Conversation

      The Conversation

      @ConversationUSjason.lindley@theconversation.com

      Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

      READ THIS LIST

      DAILY BEAST
      • Cheat Sheet
      • Politics
      • Entertainment
      • Media
      • World
      • Innovation
      • U.S. News
      • Scouted
      • Travel
      • Subscription
      • Crossword
      • Newsletters
      • Podcasts
      • About
      • Contact
      • Tips
      • Jobs
      • Advertise
      • Help
      • Privacy
      • Code of Ethics & Standards
      • Diversity
      • Terms & Conditions
      • Copyright & Trademark
      • Sitemap
      • Best Picks
      • Coupons
      • Coupons:
      • Dick's Sporting Goods Coupons
      • HP Coupon Codes
      • Chewy Promo Codes
      • Nordstrom Rack Coupons
      • NordVPN Coupons
      • JCPenny Coupons
      • Nordstrom Coupons
      • Samsung Promo Coupons
      • Home Depot Coupons
      • Hotwire Promo Codes
      • eBay Coupons
      • Ashley Furniture Promo Codes
      © 2023 The Daily Beast Company LLC