The total loss of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica would raise sea levels by more than 50 cm. Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
DECRYPTION – Researchers sent a robot under 600m of ice to explore the last contact zone with the bedrock. A crucial zone for estimating the sliding speed of the polar cap towards the sea.
With global warming, will more city-sized icebergs continue to fall off the Antarctic continent and accelerate sea level rise? Satellite and aircraft measurements have shown that the glaciers at Thwaites and Pine Island in the Amundsen Sea have been retreating rapidly, at an average rate of 1 kilometer per year since the late 1990s.
The withdrawal can even reach « in places 3 kilometers per year », confided last year Éric Rignot, researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, professor of geosciences at the University of California, Irvine. The complete melting of the Thwaites Glacier alone would cause global sea levels to rise by more than 50cm.
A human feat
Two articles published in the journal Nature Wednesday, February 15 give a better idea of the melting phenomenon that occurs between the ocean and the underside of this enormous glacial zone, the size of half of France, which rests, in part, on a bedrock. The phenomenon is being studied closely, because the researchers know that the circulation of hot water under the glacier can accelerate its sliding, with threshold effects beyond which the melting could be irreversible.
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