Nature: Antarctica Is Melting From Below

[kristopher]

Nature: Antarctica Is Melting From Below, Which ‘May Already Have Triggered A Period of Unstable Glacier Retreat’
By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 27, 2012 at 12:29 pm

We knew that “deep ocean heat is rapidly melting Antarctic ice.” And we knew that these warm ocean currents melting Antarctica were so intense that, seawater appears to “boil on the surface like a kettle on the stove.”


We also knew that the the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) is inherently far less stable than the Greenland ice sheet because most of it is grounded far below sea level (see below). And JPL has told us that polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up and is on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050.

Now a new study using NASA satellite data finds the WAIS in particular is “being eaten away from below by warm water” as the AP put it, which “suggests that future sea levels could rise faster than many scientists have been predicting.”
The Nature study itself, “Antarctic ice-sheet loss driven by basal melting of ice shelves,” concludes:

We find that ocean-driven ice-shelf thinning is in all cases coupled with dynamic thinning of grounded tributary glaciers that together account for about 40% of Antarctic discharge and the majority of Antarctic ice-sheet mass loss. In agreement with recent model predictions, we conclude that it is reduced buttressing from the thinning ice shelves that is driving glacier acceleration and dynamic thinning. This implies that the most profound contemporary changes to the ice sheets and their contribution to sea level rise can be attributed to ocean thermal forcing that is sustained over decades and may already have triggered a period of unstable glacier retreat.

This ought to be doubly worrisome since ...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/27/471922/nature-antarctica-melting-from-below-may-already-have-triggered-a-period-of-unstable-glacier-retreat/