An Antarctic glacier is melting “irreversibly,” offering “a striking vision of the near future,” a new study shows.
The study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at Pine Island Glacier, the largest single contributor to sea-level rise in the Antarctic.
The team of scientists used three ice flow models to look at the glacier’s grounding line, which separates the grounded ice sheet from the floating ice shelf.
The grounding line, which has already retreated by about 10 kilometers in the last decade, “is probably engaged in an unstable 40 kilometer retreat,” the study finds.
The glacier “has started a phase of self-sustained retreat and will irreversibly continue its decline,” said Gael Durand, a glaciologist with France’s Grenoble Alps University and study co-author.
Durand says the findings show “a striking vision of the near future. All the models suggest that [the glacier’s] recession will not stop, cannot be reversed and that more ice will be transferred into the ocean.”
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