Mustang during the Washington Auto Show in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Jan. From their camp in the middle of the Antarctic to their stations on the coast, Scambos and a team of researchers flew over the gargantuan Thwaites Glacier, the size of Idaho, for two hours.Īn exhibitor demonstrates plugging in a charging port for a Ford Motor Co. Last year, for example, researchers discovered that the ice shelf holding back the Thwaites Glacier - also known as the “Doomsday glacier” - could collapse within the next five years. There has been a series of ice shelf collapses over the past 40 years, but those have mainly been in West Antarctica, which is warmer compared to the east. Larter said that warming temperatures are making the collapse of ice shelves more likely. In other words, they thin rapidly and they flow faster when the shelf is removed.” “But every time we’ve seen a shelf that is braced against an offshore island or even the coast of a bay, the glaciers behind it sense that there’s a back pressure, that there’s a force that’s resisting outward flow. “It’s not a very large shelf,” Scambos said. Scambos said the Conger’s collapse is another instance in which scientists get to observe what happens when an ice shelf is lost and a glacier is threatened. Scambos said large rips had formed over time because of this pressure. Scambos said that for a long time the ice shelf had been wedged against an island, with the same effect as putting too much pressure on a piece of wood that later begins to splinter. “And that’s what happened at Conger - and it’s an example of how Antarctica responds to these record events.” Photo by John Bates, Field Museum John Bates/Field Museumīirds are laying eggs earlier, a new study shows. “It’s been used to being surrounded by this fringe of sea ice it’s been used to temperatures that are below freezing and so those are big steps in terms of the kind of energy or the kind of processes that can happen to take away the ice from the edge of the continent.”ģ893: A drawer of eggs in the Field Museum's collection. “Antarctica as a whole has kind of been locked away in an icebox,” he told CNN. Scambos said it could be a preview of what’s to come as the climate crisis eats away at the continent. Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said the ice shelf’s collapse was likely a culmination of the record low sea ice conditions and the wave action hitting the shelf during the recent warm period, which was spurred by a strong winds from the warmer north. Possible it hit its tipping point following the #Antarctic #AtmosphericRiver and heatwave too? #CongerIceShelf #Antarctica /1wzmuOwdQn- Catherine Colello Walker March 24, 2022 km) ~March 15, seen in combo of #Landsat and #MODIS imagery. When a shelf collapses, there tends to be an increase in the ice that flows from the land into the ocean, which leads to sea level rise- a phenomenon that threatens coastal communities around the world.Ĭomplete collapse of East Antarctica's Conger Ice Shelf (~1200 sq. They help prevent those ice sheets from feeding ice unabated into the ocean. Ice shelves like the Conger are extensions of land-based ice sheets and glaciers that jut out over the ocean. Just a month ago, data showed Antarctica would set a record this year for lowest sea-ice extent - the area of ocean covered by sea ice around the continent. “Conger is a very small ice shelf which has been decreasing in size for many years and this was just the final step which caused it to collapse.”Īntarctica is the coldest, iciest place on Earth, which makes the recent warming event particularly worrying for many scientists. “I don’t think there has been a shelf collapse like this in East Antarctica since we’ve been able to receive satellite data,” Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN. The Great Barrier Reef is suffering a sixth mass-bleaching event. Australian Marine Conservation Society/Climate Council/Grumpy Turtle The reef has suffered damage despite the La Nina weather system that usually lowers maximum average temperatures. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has just completed aerial surveys of all 3,000 reefs on the reef system. Underwater images taken in 2022 show the Great Barrier Reef is suffering heat stress. Coral at Stanley Reef, about 83 miles (133 kilometers) off Townsville in Queensland, shows signs of bleaching caused by rising sea temperatures.
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