Worryingly, some scientists believe Pine Island Glacier, and its neighbor Thwaites, which also empties into Pine Island Bay, are inherently unstable due to a quirk of geometry. ", Velicogna said that there are other processes that play "a much larger role" in glacier evolution, such as "the rate of retreat of the grounding line forced by a warmer ocean.". And there's more bad news for glaciers on the other side of the world. We use satellite imagery to show how the shear margins of both @AntarcticPIG and @ThwaitesGlacier have weakened. It flows, together with Thwaites Ice Stream, into the Amundsen Sea embayment in West Antarctica, and the two ice streams together drain ~5% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet 1. Researchers found that while the tearing of Pine Island Glacier's shear margins has been documented since 1999, their satellite imagery shows that damage sped up dramatically in 2016. That's exactly what the researchers observed -- and they believe these severely weakening parts of the glacier will accelerate mass ice loss. ", Velicogna said the research "points to another Achilles' heel of the system conducive to faster retreat, and triggered by climate change. Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier in the Amundsen Sea Embayment are among the fastest changing outlet glaciers in West Antarctica with large consequences for global sea level. 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(a) Modelled ice-sheet surface at 20 ka (Golledge et al., 2012), showing the calculated drainage catchment of Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in Researchers warn the process is creating a feedback loop -- where the weakening ice shelf is speeding up the damage to the glacier's vulnerable shear margins, which in turn leads to more damage and disintegration of the ice shelf. These recent findings from Antarctica show that the glaciers are "weakening from all angles," Lhermitte said. Most of this transport to the sea is by ice streams (faster moving channels of ice surrounded by slower moving ice walls) and outlet glaciers. Here you see a @NASA_Landsat ️ time lapse of @AntarcticPIG showing how the shear margin is tearing apart [2/n] pic.twitter.com/u7vRfFxcOH, We hypothesize that this damage preconditions these ice shelves for further disintegration. The location of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers (A) in western Antarctica in relation to Cape Horn, South America (B). Human-induced warming of our oceans and atmosphere because of the increasing release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases is weakening the planet's ice shelves. Located along the coast of the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute around 5 percent of … Figure 2: Outline of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers (blue hatched areas). 5:10:35 PM +00:00. Located along the coast of the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute around 5% of global sea level rise. Isabella Velicogna, Professor of Earth System Sciences at the University of California Irvine, who wasn't involved in the study, said that, "with a process of weakening of the ice shelf included in models, it is likely that the glacier speed up will occur sooner and will be larger in magnitude, which means that sea level will rise faster than currently projected. The damage researchers found pointed to a weakening of the glaciers' shear margins -- areas at the edges of the floating ice shelf where the fast moving ice meets the slower moving ice or rock underneath. Figure 5Modelled water flow beneath Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers at the LGM. The researchers, led by Stef Lhermitte, satellite expert at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, used satellite data to document the growth of the damaged areas from 1997 to 2019. Most people will never see Pine Island Glacier in person. In order to facilitate geochemical and mineralogical tracing of the two most important glaciers draining into the Amundsen Sea, i.e. The time to act is now. Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier in the Amundsen Sea Embayment are among the fastest changing outlet glaciers in West Antarctica … "Warm ocean water gets to the (glaciers') base and weakens them. Located near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula—the “thumb” of the continent—the glacier lies more than 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) from the tip of South America. Drinking tea, coffee from paper cups can increase chances of cancer: Indian research Scientists say the glaciers are. If Thwaites were to collapse, it could lead to an increase in sea levels of around 25 inches (64 centimeters). The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice on earth, containing a volume of water equivalent to 57 m (187 ft) of global sea level. Pine Island Glacier retreated 31 km at its center, with most retreat in 2005–2009 when the glacier ungrounded from its ice plain. Similarly, the damage to Thwaites Glacier began moving further upstream in 2016 and fractures rapidly started opening up near the glacier's grounding line, which is where the ice meets the rock bed. It's a giant mass of more than 192,000 square kilometers (74,000 square miles) -- an area similar in size to the US state of Florida, or Great Britain. Subglacial Marie Byrd Mantle Plume volcanoes that are located directly beneath these glaciers (colored circles, larger circles are larger volcanos, black outlined circles are volcanoes identified by other studies, and circle color indicates volcano identification confidence factor, credit De Vries 2017 ). Pine Island Glacier, one of the fastest-shrinking glaciers in Antarctica, has just lost another huge chunk of ice to the sea, continuing a troubling trend that has become a … That evidence points to a rapid collapse of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. First, because it already compromises the integrity of both ice shelves. Subglacial Marie Byrd Mantle Plume volcanoes that are located directly beneath these glaciers (colored circles, larger circles are larger volcanos, black outlined circles are volcanoes identified by other studies, and circle color indicates volcano identification confidence factor, credit De Vries 2017 ). The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, which sit side by side in West Antarctica on the Amundsen Sea, are among the fastest changing glaciers in the region, already accounting for 5% of … In a remote region of Antarctica known as Pine Island Bay, the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers sprawl across a plain over 150-miles-long, widening as they go inland to … Pine Island Glacier flows at … What we observed is that this becomes so weakened, that they speed up and once they speed up, the shear margins speed up and start to break. UK and US scientists are collaborating to investigate one of the most unstable glaciers in Antarctica, the Thwaites Glacier, roughly the same size as … "We knew they were sleeping giants and these were the ones losing a lot of miles (of ice), but how far and how much still remains a large uncertainty," Lhermitte said. NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. The Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers in the Antarctic, along the coast of the Amundsen Sea, are already under scrutiny, having been responsible for five per cent of... To improve the performance of our website, show the most relevant news products and targeted advertising, we collect technical impersonal information about you, including through the tools of our partners. "These ice shelves are in the early phase of disintegration, they're starting to tear apart.". Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and Thwaites Glacier (TG), we here provide the first multi-proxy Antarctica's Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are tearing themselves apart, and it is horrifying. ", What we'll have to endure as the climate crisis gets worse, Hear how the Pfizer vaccine will be distributed, FDA commissioner assures public that science guided vaccine decision, FDA authorizes Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, Videos show packed crowds at Mexico art festival, Supreme Court rejects Trump's bid to overturn election, Head of Operation Warp Speed: There is no reason for pressure on FDA, Biden says Covid-19 vaccine is 'free from political influence', White House told FDA chief to authorize vaccine or resign. The ice sheet forms from snow which falls onto the continent and compacts under its own weight. (CNN)Satellite images show that two important glaciers in the Antarctic are sustaining rapid damage at their most vulnerable points, leading to the breaking up of vital ice shelves with major consequences for global sea level rise. Pine Island Glacier’s unstable state is evidenced by the diminishing time between calving events; prior events this century happened in 2001, 2007, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2018. The territory's ice sheet is the second biggest in the world behind Antarctica's, and its annual melt contributes more than a millimeter rise to sea levels every year. Outline of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers (blue hatched areas). Between Thwaites and Pine Island, the amount of ice day Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are approximately twice as deep, 3 times as wide, and cover an area over 400 times larger than the terrestrial meltwater channels compris- ing the Labyrinth in the Antarctic Dry Valleys. "Most of the weakening in this part of Antarctica is coming from below," he said. It's floating on the ocean but it buttresses the ice traffic behind it," Lhermitte said. Thwaites Glacier retreated 14 km along its fast flow core and 1 to 9 km along the sides. The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are among the most critical in the world. The study makes the case that this process should be included in models that project sea level rise, which it's not currently a part of. A massive crack in Pine Island Glacier is steadily growing, as seen in a Sept. 14, 2012, satellite image. Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences of the United States of America, Ways to get involved in the 2020 Election. These geological features are emitting enormous amounts of ice melting bedrock heat onto the bottom of the glaciers. The Antarctic ice sheet consists of the large, relatively stable, East Antarctic Ic… Updated 1043 GMT (1843 HKT) September 15, 2020. In West Antarctica, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier have been melting at alarming rates, according to satellite imagery over the ice continent. Haynes Pine Island Glacier's rapid retreat is unprecedented in the past 10,000 years. This ocean warming has increased the melting and calving (the breaking off of ice chunks) of Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, studies show, while. Pine Island Glacier is one of the largest ice streams in Antarctica. [4/n] pic.twitter.com/HqaPjg8OHv, An example of this preconditioning can be seen in the unprecedented retreat of the @AntarcticPIG ice shelf front over the last years where the ice shelf lost 30% of its area. UsingtheBEDMAP thicknessmodels,wecalculatethat Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers contain 396330 and 306910km3of ice, respectively, of which 250590 and 210460km3, respectively, are above sea level. Areas and open fractures in the early phase of disintegration, they 're starting tear... 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