Scientists Confirm That Warm Ocean Water Is Melting the Biggest Glacier in East Antarctica
By Chris Mooney
16 December 2016(Washington Post) – Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia on Friday published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared — Totten is melting from below.
The measurements, sampling ocean temperatures in seas over a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep in some places right at the edge of Totten glacier’s floating ice shelf, affirmed that warm ocean water is flowing in towards the glacier at the rate of 220,000 cubic meters per second.
These waters, the paper asserts, are causing the ice shelf to lose between 63 and 80 billion tons of its mass to the ocean per year, and to lose about 10 meters (32 feet) of thickness annually, a reduction that has been previously noted based on satellite measurements.
This matters because more of East Antarctica flows out towards the sea through the Totten glacier region than for any other glacier in the entirety of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Its entire “catchment,” or the region of ice that slowly flows outward through Totten glacier and its ice shelf, is larger than California. If all of this ice were to end up in the ocean somehow, seas would raise by about 11.5 feet.
“This ice shelf is thinning, and it’s thinning because the ocean is delivering warm water to the ice shelf, just like in West Antarctica,” said Don Blankenship, a glaciologist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study’s co-authors. [more]
Scientists confirm that warm ocean water is melting the biggest glacier in East Antarctica
ABSTRACT: Mass loss from the West Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers has been linked to basal melt by ocean heat flux. The Totten Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, which buttresses a marine-based ice sheet with a volume equivalent to at least 3.5 m of global sea-level rise, also experiences rapid basal melt, but the role of ocean forcing was not known because of a lack of observations near the ice shelf. Observations from the Totten calving front confirm that (0.22 ± 0.07) × 106 m3 s−1 of warm water enters the cavity through a newly discovered deep channel. The ocean heat transport into the cavity is sufficient to support the large basal melt rates inferred from glaciological observations. Change in ocean heat flux is a plausible physical mechanism to explain past and projected changes in this sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to sea level.
Ocean heat drives rapid basal melt of the Totten Ice Shelf
Source: http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2016/12/scientists-confirm-that-warm-ocean.html
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Id like to comment harshly, but the ocean temperatures around Antarctica such as the Ross Sea never venture above -1.5 degrees and are filled with melting ice in Summer, in Winter frozen, for the Glacier to melt it is only in the Antarctic Summer period, and then only after the sea has unfrozen. The Glacier flows out to sea, the chances of it not being affected naturally by sea temperature where it meets the ocean is exactly zero, the glacier produces its own positive flow as all glaciers do by the pressure of its own ice reducing the melting point of the mass of ice meeting bedrock, this is super cooled water under significant pressure which flows into the sea reducing the temperature and acts as a lubricant as a glacier flows.
All that has significantly changed for glaciation, is a rise in the the ocean of 200 meters since the end of the ice age, the effects are entirely natural even with a rise or fall in ocean temperature, and ocean temperature has in fact fell in Antarctica leading to all year round ice packs. Again glaciers always melt from below, it is why they are glaciers and not static cirques, they flow faster with increased deposition of snow, they retreat with rising sea levels and or a significant increase in temperature. Sometimes that temperature rises and the sea level rises as the land falls due to volcanism, currently Antarctica is host to a super volcano larger than Yellowstone or Iceland.
A rise in sea level is to be regretted, however there is simply nothing to be done to prevent Ice from flowing into the sea from Totten. All you really need to know is that it is not a man made problem and events were set in motion 15,000 years ago, until the next Ice Age there will be ice loss and sea level rises. We are inter glacial at the present time. Your normal service will be resumed as soon as when we find out what the Earths temperature is meant to be anyway.
Nice and informative explanation, thanks for sharing it with us.