Climatic warming causes glaciers to fall, raising sea levels
By: North County Times wire services | ∞
PASADENA - When climate warming causes an ice shelf to break up, glaciers surge from land into the ocean and can cause the sea level to rise, according to two NASA-funded reports.
"If anyone was waiting to find out whether Antarctica would respond quickly to climate warming, I think the answer is yes," said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist for the Boulder-based National Snow and Ice Data Center and lead author of one of the studies.
"We've seen 150 miles of coastline change dramatically in just 15 years."
Ice shelves -- thick plates that float on the ocean around much of Antarctica -- act as "brakes" on the glaciers that flow downslope into the ocean, according to the studies by Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
Since 2002, when the Larsen B ice shelf broke away from the Antarctic Peninsula as a result of regional climate warming, scientists have seen great increases in the flow of nearby glaciers into the Weddell Sea, which is part of the Southern Ocean that encircles the continent, according to the JPL.
Almost immediately after Larsen B collapsed, researchers observed glaciers flowing up to eight times faster than before.
"Glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula accelerated in response to the removal of the Larsen B ice shelf," said Eric Rignot, a JPL researcher and lead author of the other study.
"These two papers clearly illustrate, for the first time, the relationship between ice shelf collapses caused by climate warming, and accelerated glacier flow."
Increased flow of land ice into oceans contributes to a sea level rise.
Although the Larsen area glaciers are too small to affect the sea level significantly, they offer insight into what will happen when climate change spreads to regions farther south, where glaciers are much larger, according to the JPL.
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