US EditionRobot Maps Ocean Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelves For First Time
The robotic float collected nearly 200 ocean profiles over 300 km beneath East Antarctic ice shelves, revealing vulnerability to warm water and improving sea-level rise predictions.
- On Saturday, a robotic Argo float completed the first oceanographic transect beneath East Antarctic ice shelves, spending two-and-a-half years drifting about 300 km and collecting nearly 200 profiles.
- Drilling through the ice is expensive and rarely done, so Argo floats that drift with ocean currents profile from seafloor to ice base every five days over eight months under the ice.
- Dr Steve Rintoul said that 'A great advantage of floats is that they can measure the properties of the boundary layer that control the melt rate,' and ice draft measurements were reconstructed using satellite data despite GPS fixes being lost under the ice.
- Warm water is reaching the base of the Denman Glacier, which could contribute up to 1.5 metres to global sea level rise if destabilized, and large volumes of East Antarctic ice are potentially at risk from ocean heat reaching ice-shelf bases.
- Amid warnings of abrupt Antarctic change, scientists urge deploying more floats along the Antarctic continental shelf to transform understanding and call for urgent global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as some systems may soon reach points of no return.
10 Articles
10 Articles
What our missing ocean float revealed about Antartica’s melting glaciers
Pete Harmsen, CC BY-NDSometimes, we get lucky in science. In this case, an oceanographic float we deployed to do one job ended up drifting away and doing something else entirely. Equipped with temperature and salinity sensors, our Argo ocean float was supposed to be surveying the ocean around the Totten Glacier, in eastern Antarctica. To our initial disappointment, it rapidly drifted away from this region. But it soon reappeared further west, ne…
Antarctica’s collapse may already be unstoppable, scientists warn
Researchers warn Antarctica is undergoing abrupt changes that could trigger global consequences. Melting ice, collapsing ice shelves, and disrupted ocean circulation threaten sea levels, ecosystems, and climate stability. Wildlife such as penguins and krill face growing extinction risks. Scientists stress that only rapid emission reductions can avert irreversible damage.
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