Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Will Keep Melting
- 10 years ago
Three different international teams of researchers studying the Pine Island Glacier, or PIG, in Antarctica have all predicted that it will keep melting, and the retreat of the west Antarctic coastline will continue.
Three different international teams of researchers studying the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica have all predicted that it will keep melting, and the retreat of the west Antarctic coastline will continue.
The 68 thousand square mile ice sheet has been tracked by satellite imagery that shows it is thinning and retreating relatively quickly.
Studies from teams of experts in the United Kingdom, Finland, France, and China say that even if the weather got colder and the melting stopped, there are forces set in motion that will continue to push the edge of the glacier further back and contribute significantly to rising sea levels.
Dr Hilmar Gudmundsson from the British Antarctic Survey is quoted as saying: “You can talk about external forcing factors, such climate and ocean effects, and then there are internal factors which are the flow dynamics. What we find is that the internal dynamics of flow are such that the retreat is now self-sustaining.”
There have been several instances of calving on the Pine Island Glacier, where large ice bergs have broken off from the glacier and floated into the ocean, including one berg that was reportedly larger in size than the city of Chicago.
Three different international teams of researchers studying the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica have all predicted that it will keep melting, and the retreat of the west Antarctic coastline will continue.
The 68 thousand square mile ice sheet has been tracked by satellite imagery that shows it is thinning and retreating relatively quickly.
Studies from teams of experts in the United Kingdom, Finland, France, and China say that even if the weather got colder and the melting stopped, there are forces set in motion that will continue to push the edge of the glacier further back and contribute significantly to rising sea levels.
Dr Hilmar Gudmundsson from the British Antarctic Survey is quoted as saying: “You can talk about external forcing factors, such climate and ocean effects, and then there are internal factors which are the flow dynamics. What we find is that the internal dynamics of flow are such that the retreat is now self-sustaining.”
There have been several instances of calving on the Pine Island Glacier, where large ice bergs have broken off from the glacier and floated into the ocean, including one berg that was reportedly larger in size than the city of Chicago.