No one likes a surprise void. Especially not a void where ice is supposed to be. Especially not in the glacier that already plays the largest role of any single glacier’s in sea-level rise.
The void—or the “cavity,” as radar scientists put it—is in the Thwaites glacier, a troublesome mass of ice on the highly troublesome West Antarctic ice sheet. Melting from Thwaites is currently responsible for an estimated 4% of global sea-level rise. That’s before accounting for the surprise cavity.
Researchers found the cavity thanks to ice-penetrating radar attached to NASA’s Operation IceBridge aircraft, along with data from Italian and German Earth-observing satellites. They published their findings in Nature last week. The most disconcerting aspect of the discovery is the sheer size of the empty space where ice should be, and the fact that it only began growing sometime between 2011 and 2016, which suggests it is growing at an “explosive” rate, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory press release accompanying the paper.
The void is now roughly six miles (9.5 km) long and 1,000 feet (300 meters) deep. That empty space represents the loss of about 14 billion metric tons of ice.
The size of the cavity is alarming, because it contributes to a feedback loop of doom—a death spiral for the glacier, if you will: The bigger the cavity, the more water can touch the glacier from below, causing melt to speed up.
“This is the ocean eating away at the ice,” Eric Rignot, one of the authors of the study and a professor of Earth system science at the University of California-Irvine, told the New York Times. “It’s a direct impact of climate change on the glacier.”
The Thwaites glacier is a “threshold” system, which means that once it reaches a certain point in its crumbling, it will be destabilized. Once destabilized, there’s no going back; it will fall apart. If Thwaites melts down completely—which models predict is possible within 50-100 years, according to NBC— sea levels could rise by two feet on average across the globe.
And if Thwaites falls apart, it could trigger the destabilization the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
As Jeff Goodell put it in Rolling Stone, a complete collapse of Thwaites would be a doomsday scenario:
When a chunk of ice the size of Pennsylvania falls apart, that’s a big problem. It won’t happen overnight, but if we don’t slow the warming of the planet, it could happen within decades. And its loss will destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice, and that will go too. Seas will rise about 10 feet in many parts of the world; in New York and Boston, because of the way gravity pushes water around the planet, the waters will rise even higher, as much as 13 feet.
The prospect of a Thwaites collapse is terrifying enough for some scientists to propose artificially propping it up. In 2018, a pair of researchers put forth the idea of building an artificial sill—a sort of crutch—to hold it back, but also acknowledged that humanity’s engineering ability is probably not be at that level yet. “An ice sheet intervention today would be at the edge of human capabilities,” they wrote. “The easiest design that we considered would be comparable to the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted.”
Quit presenting facts.Surprise, there’s a six-mile hole under Antarctica
How is this considered GW when it is heating from the bottom up? It should be Geothermal warming no?
13°C outside and the little snow that we had is melting away. The southern Ontario winter was a whole week long, this year. I guess that the next ice advance is upon us.
Move 1400km South to Casper Wyoming so you can be at the same latitude as Curious kitty.Trade you -36c and over 2' of snow on the ground
Tic-toc. Phase II . . . . .13°C outside and the little snow that we had is melting away. The southern Ontario winter was a whole week long, this year. I guess that the next ice advance is upon us.
I live on the same latitude as Florence Italy. Down around Leamington, they are on the same parallel as Rome.You have to remember where he lives is about 800 km South of the 49th parallel.
At least 1000 km south of you.
Damn near the Jewtah/Idaho border.
Climate scientists say 2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record, but there may be some hope in Manitoba.Eric Reder of the Wilderness Committee told 680 CJOB that the province is among the more environmentally-friendly areas in Canada.
"We often talk about the fear of how things really are going to change," said Reder. "I'm a bit leery of doing that all the time.
"There's a lot of hope in Manitoba, of the way that we can change things and really put our stamp as a leader around the world of acting on climate."
Reder – whose organization is involved in the Peg City Climate Jam, a series of workshops taking place Saturday at the University of Winnipeg's Richardson College for the Environment – said one of the greatest challenges is to move away from the fossil fuel industry.
READ MORE: Winnipeg junior high students demanding action on climate change
"If we stopped using fossil fuels today, the climate emergency would disappear. It's as simple as that, but the chances of us doing that are zero," he said.
"The movement forward is to figure out how to get off fossil fuel as an energy source, and in Manitoba, we know where our energy comes from – hydroelectricity – so we have a phenomenal opportunity to be a leader.
"That's one of the big pieces of hope that I try to offer to people from Manitoba."
Reder said that without taking action, Manitobans could see side-effects of climate change that aren't necessarily immediately apparent.
He said the movement of bugs and parasites could be the biggest negative effect, with infestations decimating some species of plants and animals in the province.
"The cycle, the balance, the web of nature and wilderness that exists is going to change, and it's going to change in ways that we might not see coming."
Saturday's event will be an opportunity for Manitobans to learn about and discuss the potential impacts of climate change, as well as transformative work already underway in some of our communities.
"People want to come together," said Reder. "This eco-anxiety, they're worried about the future. One way to deal with that is to talk it through."
LOL, that is why My Toronto based family members have ALWAYS left their snowmobiles, scoots, and SKIS, here since the 50s - because they could NEVER ride them down there, because freaks of nature aside, there NEVER was enough snow there, and certainly, NEVER enough winter.13°C outside and the little snow that we had is melting away. The southern Ontario winter was a whole week long, this year. I guess that the next ice advance is upon us.
It's called "Lake Effect" whereby moist, saturated air blows eastward from a Great Lake or other large body of water and dumps it's load when the cools, a bit. It doesn't happen when it's really cold. In fact, it doesn't snow much at all when it's really cold. Lake effect is in no way a symptom of "cold".LOL, that is why My Toronto based family members have ALWAYS left their snowmobiles, scoots, and SKIS, here since the 50s - because they could NEVER ride them down there, because freaks of nature aside, there NEVER was enough snow there, and certainly, NEVER enough winter.
LOL, you propaganda freaks are too much!!!
Any wealthy folks in Toronto have their ski chalets in the COLLINGWOOD to Barrie area where the snow belt is, JUST 60 Km from the city, where they get MOUNTAINS OF SNOW, while YOU do not!!!
It's called "Lake Effect" whereby moist, saturated air blows eastward from a Great Lake or other large body of water and dumps it's load when the cools, a bit. It doesn't happen when it's really cold. In fact, it doesn't snow much at all when it's really cold. Lake effect is in no way a symptom of "cold".
But what am I saying? You're a Metis and therefore you know all of this and you can "read the signs".
What do the wooly bear caterpillars tell you, this year?
In our case, the temperature is low enough that we keep the snow we get (dependent on the jet stream location ), but Toronto gets a MODERATED temp effect year round because of it's location re the great lakes, which means rain more than snow, and it doesn't make for a real winter there.I found that the jet stream affect Canadian temperature but not precipitation so much...