Antarctic melting may raise by three meters sea level

19.mar.2015 - Vote leads a team of scientists to the station in Antarctica


A key area of ​​western Antarctica could already be sufficiently unstable to disappear and cause an increase of three meters in sea levels, scientists warned on Monday.

The study is followed by a survey last year, led by NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot, in which he warned that the Antarctic ice had reached an irreversible shrinkage point that the thaw was uncontrollable and could raise sea levels by 1.2 meter.

Now, scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, pointed to the long-term impacts of the crucial sector of the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica, which - hold - "most likely be destabilized."

While previous studies "have studied the future development of this region in the short term, here we take a step further and simulate the long-term evolution of the entire ice sheet of West Antarctica," the authors indicated in the annals of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers used computer models to project the effects of 60 years of melting at the current rate and predicted that "there would be a complete disintegration in the long run."

In other words, "all marine ice sheet will fall into the ocean, causing an overall increase in sea levels of about three meters," stated the authors.

"If the destabilization has started, an increase of three meters in sea levels in coming centuries to millennia could be preventable," she added.

Until a few decades of warming oceans could trigger a thaw with hundreds to thousands of years in length.

"Once the ice masses are affected, which is what is currently taking place, respond in a non-linear way: there is a relatively sudden rupture of stability after a long period in which they see little change," warned lead author study, Johannes Feldmann.