The big melt: Warming in Antarctica could raise world’s oceans by 3m

Massive ice flows are entering the world’s oceans and could raise sea levels 3 metres worldwide in a century or two, reforming heavily-populated coastlines. Climate change has shifted the wind pattern around Antarctica, pushing warmer water farther north against and below the western ice sheet and the peninsula. The warm, more northerly water replaces the cooler water that had been there. It’s only a couple degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the water that used to be there, but that makes a huge difference in melting, scientists said. The world’s fate hangs on the question of how fast the ice melts.

Changing the climate of the Earth or thinning glaciers is fine as long as you don’t do it too fast. And right now we are doing it as fast as we can. It’s not good.

Eric Rignot, NASA ice scientist

This discovery negates a previous finding, which said that the Antarctic ice sheet was in balance, neither gaining nor decreasing in volume. However, the ice is gaining in East Antarctica, where the air and water are cooler — but the ice is melting much faster and more in the west, causing experts to say that it’s “irreversible” and “unstoppable.”

Science