Ice shelves break off amid heat wave in Antarctica. This comes as a surprise to researchers – they warn of further such events.
Antarctica – In mid-March, East Antarctica experienced a heat wave that surprised even researchers. It is now becoming apparent that the unexpected heat had consequences: In East Antarctica, the Conger Ice Shelf – a sheet of ice that floats on the sea but is fed by and connected to glaciers – has broken off. This is an ice sheet with a size of 1200 square kilometers – about the size of the Italian capital Rome. Although relatively small, it is still “one of the most significant ruptures in Antarctica since the early 2000s when the Larsen B Ice Shelf broke up,” Earth and planetary scientist Catherine Colello Walker told the Guardian about the event.
The Conger Ice Shelf has been shrinking since the mid-2000s, and now the heat wave has apparently affected it. “Losing mass of ice shelves is part of normal behavior – but the large ice shelf break-off is a very unusual event,” Andrew Mackintosh told the Guardian. “It seems more like a collapse than normal behavior.” The expert can imagine that the heat wave in Antarctica melted ice on the surface, which could have led to the demolition. However, he also says that “more evidence” is needed to link the break-off of the Conger Ice Shelf to the heatwave. When the Larsen B Ice Shelf broke off in 2002, melting of the surface was also the trigger.
Antarctica Heatwave: Ice Shelf Breaks Off – “A Sign of What Could Be Coming”
The collapse of the Conger Ice Shelf “probably won’t have much of an effect, but it’s a sign of what could be coming,” Walker said. Seeing even a small ice shelf break off in East Antarctica is a surprise, glacier researcher Peter Neff told the Guardian. “We’re still treating East Antarctica like a massive, tall, dry, cold, and immobile ice cube,” Neff said. “Current understanding suggests that because of the geometry of the ice and subsoil, you don’t get the same rapid ice loss there as you do in West Antarctica.”
Data from Copernicus’ Sentinel-1 satellite shows that ice shelf movement began between March 5 and 7. According to experts, the ice shelf broke off around March 15. An ice shelf is a large sheet of ice, 200 to 1000 meters thick, that floats on the sea. It is fed by and connected to glaciers or ice caps. At the outer edge of ice shelves, ice breaks off time and time again – a process called “calving” that creates icebergs.
Ice in Antarctica can affect global sea levels
In addition to the Conger Ice Shelf breaking off, there were two other “Kalb” processes in East Antarctica in March. “A large part of East Antarctica is supported by ice shelves, so we need to keep an eye on all the ice shelves there,” explains glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker on twitter. East Antarctica is “the big elephant in the room that we haven’t tackled yet. It’s huge,” Fricker recently told the Scientific American. The ice in East Antarctica has great potential to affect global sea levels.
Conger Ice Shelf break-up shouldn’t affect sea levels, says Matt King. After all, ice shelves would already be floating in the water. However, experts are more concerned about the glaciers behind the ice shelf: In the case of the Conger Ice Shelf, it is only a small glacier that is only likely to have a “minimal impact on future sea levels,” according to King. But due to climate change, more ice shelves would break off in the future. “We will see huge expanses of ice shelves – much larger than this – break off. And those will hold back a lot of ice — enough to seriously raise global sea levels.” The speed at which the Conger Ice Shelf broke off “reminds us that things can change quickly,” says researcher King .
Heat wave in Antarctica with record temperatures
The US Space Agency NASA* observes the ice in Antarctica using satellites. In February 2022, the ice surface in Antarctica according to the reports the smallest extent since satellite observations began in 1979. For the first time, the ice covered an area of less than two million square kilometers – 190,000 square kilometers less than the previous low from March 2017. For comparison: In 2022, Antarctica is missing According to NASA, sea ice covers an area twice the size of the US state of California.
Surname: | Antarctic |
Region: | land and sea areas around the South Pole |
Special feature: | largest independent ice mass on earth |
Special feature: | largest nature reserve on earth |
Thickness of Ice: | up to 4.5 kilometers |
In March, the Antarctic research stations Concordia and Wostok reported record temperatures, sometimes up to 40 degrees more than is usual at this time of year. It is still unclear whether the heat wave is linked to climate change. However, through the Climate change worldwide Heat waves more frequent and intense*, especially the Polar ice caps heat up quickly*. (Tanya Banner) *fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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