University’s scientists have predicted that more than a third of the area of the Antarctician shelf glaciers may be under threat of collapse in the sea, if the global temperature reaches the mark of four degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. This is reported in the article published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers conducted a high-resolution regional climate modeling to predict the effects of melting and draining water to the stability of the shelf ice. According to various scenarios, in the current century, global temperatures can increase by 1.5, 2 and 4 degrees Celsius, which will accelerate the melting of ice in Antarctica to an unprecedented level. The shelf glaciers themselves play the role of a traffic jam, which hampered from the shore into the ocean of huge ice masses.
Every summer ice on the surface of the shelf glacier melts and flows into small gaps in the snow layer below, where it freezes. If melting water becomes too much, it can split the glacier and cause its collapse into the sea, which happened to the Larsen shelf glacier in 2002.
Scientists have identified Larsen’s shelf glaciers with, Sheklton, Pine Island and Wilkins as the most susceptible collapse at warming for four degrees Celsius. In general, 34 percent of the area of all the Antarctician shelf glaciers, which is equivalent to half a million square kilometers, will be at risk of catastrophic destabilization.