Antarctic calving loss rivals ice-shelf thinning
Antarctica's ice shelves help to control the flow of glacial ice as it drains into the ocean, meaning that the rate of global sea-level rise is subject to the structural integrity of these fragile, floating extensions of the ice sheet 1 , 2 , 3 . Until now, data limitations have made it difficu...
| Published in: | Nature |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2022
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05037-w http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35948639 http://ecite.utas.edu.au/152079 |
| Summary: | Antarctica's ice shelves help to control the flow of glacial ice as it drains into the ocean, meaning that the rate of global sea-level rise is subject to the structural integrity of these fragile, floating extensions of the ice sheet 1 , 2 , 3 . Until now, data limitations have made it difficult to monitor the growth and retreat cycles of ice shelves on a large scale, and the full impact of recent calving-front changes on ice-shelf buttressing has not been understood. Here, by combining data from multiple optical and radar satellite sensors, we generate pan-Antarctic, spatially continuous coastlines at roughly annual resolution since 1997. We show that from 1997 to 2021, Antarctica experienced a net loss of 36,701+-1,465 square kilometres (1.9 per cent) of ice-shelf area that cannot be fully regained before the next series of major calving events, which are likely to occur in the next decade. Mass loss associated with ice-front retreat (5,874+-396 gigatonnes) has been approximately equal to mass change owing to ice-shelf thinning over the past quarter of a century (6,113+-452 gigatonnes), meaning that the total mass loss is nearly double that which could be measured by altimetry-based surveys alone. We model the impacts of Antarctica's recent coastline evolution in the absence of additional feedbacks, and find that calving and thinning have produced equivalent reductions in ice-shelf buttressing since 2007, and that further retreat could produce increasingly significant sea-level rise in the future. |
|---|