The Wilkins Ice Shelf, on the West Antarctic Peninsula, has become the latest frosty poster child for global warming's effect on ice in West Antarctica. The disintegration of an ice bridge, shown here as an outline after the bridge broke up at the end of April, means the entire shelf is now vulnerable to break-up. Wilkins has become the southernmost shelf along the peninsula to disintegrate.
(AFP PHOTO/HO/ESA)Photos (1 of 1)
If W. Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, how high will sea levels rise?
By Pete Spotts | 05.15.09
Jonathan Bamber scans his audience – a mix of young scientists-in-training and graybeards – and asks: “If I melted the West Antarctic Ice Sheet tomorrow, how much would sea level rise?”
The answer he typically gets, he continues, ranges from 5 to 7 meters (16 to 23 feet). After all, this has become a kind of canonical range well-grounded in the scientific literature, right?
Not so much, it turns out. And therein lies some of the backstory to a study by Dr. Bamber and his Dutch and British colleagues that appears in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Monitor colleague Moises Velasquez-Manoff has summarized the results here. But if you want to give your web browser a rest, here are the bullet points:
• If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) melts, global average sea levels would rise by 3.3 meters. That’s down significantly from the typical estimates. But it still represents an immense creeping disaster, direct and indirect, for more than than 3.2 billion people worldwide who live within 200 miles of a coastline.
• The East and West Coasts of North America would see increases 25 percent higher than the global average, Bamber told an audience in March at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. With a wry grin, he asked the group: “Do you believe in karma?” (India’s coasts would see such higher-than-average effects as well.)
Here’s a bit of the backstory
When estimating what would happen if the WAIS vanished into the ocean, scientists have been using a figure for sea-level rise that first appeared in a peer-reviewed science journal 30 years ago. But the estimate itself had originated 10 years earlier in a paper that never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, Bamber explained during his March talk. Both were written by the same scientist.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the original calculations were wrong. But clearing peer review – as messy a process as it can be – provides a level of scrutiny that the original calculations apparently didn’t undergo.
“The numbers are 40 years old,” Bamber says. “And they’re based on what? It’s almost impossible to tell.”
Better ways to track icecaps, now
Meanwhile, the tools used to study the planet’s great ice caps have improved dramatically.
In particular, satellites have substantially bolstered scientists’ ability to trace changes in the amount of ice and its movements. NASA’s ICESAT uses a laser altimeter to measure changes in the surface features of ice. GRACE, a pair of satellites that orbit in tandem, measure subtle changes in the gravity field as ice gains or loses mass. And synthetic-aperture radar can measure changes in the speed of glacial ice as it heads seaward.
Moreover, researchers have reconstructed the WAIS’s past behavior though sediment samples taken from the ocean floor off the continent. And they’ve gotten a better feel for what the ground under the ice sheet looks like.
All this made the time ripe for a more rigorous look at the impact that losing much of the ice sheet would have on sea level. Bamber’s team doesn’t assume complete loss of the sheet because in some areas in West Antarctica, the relief of the underlying bedrock would prevent the ice from traveling.
Researchers silent on when collapse might occur
The team has nothing to say in this study about time-scales for a collapse of much of the WAIS. Many of the models glaciologists use to project the behavior of the WAIS and of Greenland’s ice sheet have yielded reaction times measured in thousands of years.
Based on evidence from the past four or five ice ages, “we know you can get rid of ice sheets very quickly, in a couple of thousand years,” Bamber explains. “But it takes much, much longer to grow them back. That’s why we’re concerned about tipping points in the climate system.”
Sixty-six feet in 500 years
Even more startling is evidence since the peak of the last ice age, he continues. At one point, the sea level rose 20 meters in 500 years. “That has to be from the ice sheets,” he says. “That shows they can do something really pretty spectacular.”
Today, it would take a meltdown of all of West Antarctica’s ice sheet, all of Greenland’s, and a significant chunk of East Antarctica’s to push sea levels that high.
Which brings him back around to the WAIS today. Work that he and his colleagues have been conducting as they try to track changes in the mass budget for the WAIS, particularly the sections of ice sheet that empty into the Bellinghausen and Amundsen Seas – a region of the WAIS that he says is particularly unstable, given its underlying topography.
“All the losses, and they are big losses, are taking place along that coast,” he says.
Melting has accelerated dramatically in 10 years
“The take-home message is that the loss has been accelerating really quite dramatically in the last 10 years,” he says. The same holds true for Greenland, even with the uncertainties that attend the measurements.
What’s worrisome, he says, is the gap between the range of responses climate models show for Greenland and Antarctica’s ice compared with what scientists are observing.
Models don’t match observations
For instance, scientists at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Britain factored the results of warming scenarios used in the last set of UN reports on global warming into ice-sheet models. In all scenarios, Greenland loses mass to ice melt, while Antarctica’s ice gains mass overall.
“But this is not what we observe,” he says. “East Antarctica isn’t gaining mass, and West Antarctica is losing the same as Greenland. This makes us think there’s something seriously wrong with the state of the art” for predictions of what could happen with the ice caps at the top and bottom of the world.
Closing that gap, he concludes, requires more reconstructions of past changes in ice extent and pace of movement. These provide a reality check on the models. And the community needs to design models that do a better job of reproducing the ice activity scientists are seeing today.
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2. Something to Think About | 05.16.09
A couple of years ago, scientist discovered vegitation under the ice of Antartica. This means at one point in time there was no ice there. The earth is going through a warming cycle, years from now it will go into a cooling cycle. In the 70’s the big scare was another ice age. Global Warming is nothing but a scare tactic, just like Y2K.
3. Frank Liden | 05.16.09
What could the cause of this melting be? Is the magnitude of the melt/rise similar to that of the melting of the North American ice sheet 10000 yrs ago?
I have read that the cause is under-ice volcanism, but articles on this ice sheet seem to conflate global warming with anthrogenic warming.
5. Ralph | 05.16.09
Perform this experiment. Get a block of ice, sea salt, a washtub, and a water proof marker. plastic tarp, water.
Put fill the washtub half full. Mix in about a pound of salt for every gallon of water. This will probably saturate it.
Drop in the ice block.
Mark the level of the water.
Cover it with the plastic tarp to limit loss due to evaporation.
Check on it every couple of hours until the ice is melted.
See how far the water has risen.
WHAT? It went down.
How is the sea level going to rise if ice is less dense than ice?
6. Derek | 05.16.09
Science experiment anyone? Take a bottle of water (full) and throw it in your freezer over night. In the morning, the water will have turned to ice and, if the bottle was full, should have bursted the cap off. You see, water is one of the few compounds that expands when it freezes due to its unique structure. This means that, when the water melts, it will condense. So, if water condenses when it melts, then sea levels could not rise. That’s more science and data than you will get from any global warming spook.
8. Fred | 05.16.09
Ralph and Derek appear to share a fundamental misunderstanding. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is not floating, it is on the continent of Antarctica. When it melts, sea level will rise.
9. Gus | 05.16.09
For ice that is floating on water — except for a tiny volumetric change from a temperature change — melting will not raise the water level since the ice is already displacing its mass in floating on the water. The rise in sea level will come from the melting of the massive amounts of ice presently supported by land as they move to the sea — as glaciers — or melt in place. Both of which happen steadily.
10. Daniel Narvaes | 05.16.09
Those who say the sea level will not rise if the ice sheet melts do not know much about this ice sheet. The primary reason the sea level will rise is that the ice sheet is supported by rock underneath, not just water. But there are also other reasons, given in the article “New study: Less sea rise expected from possible Antarctic melt.” There are two links to that article on this page, so please read it before you say that the sea level rise is all a hoax.
Also, before you say the warming is totally due to a natural cycle, consider the direct ways that humans change the landscape, on a rapid timescale compared to any natural change. It should come as no surprise that indirect effects such as warming, ocean acidification, and higher average wind speed also are occurring on a timescale more rapid than that of most natural climate cycles. Sea level rise and further warming will lead to a loss of land, and lower production of food, which will make it very hard for people to live. Therefore, if there are changes humans can make to our behavior to forestall or reverse the impending climate changes, we should make those changes and work for the objective of providing a safe habitat for our descendants, and also for other species who share this planet with us.
11. Bill Preston | 05.16.09
From 1992 to 2003, Curt Davis, MU professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team of researchers observed 7.1 million kilometers of the ice sheet, using satellites to measure changes in elevation. They discovered that the ice sheet’s interior was gaining mass by about 45 billion tons per year, which was enough to slow sea level rise by .12 millimeters per year. The interior of the ice sheet is the only large terrestrial ice body that is likely gaining mass rather than losing it, Davis said.
“Many recent studies have focused on coastal ice sheet losses and their contributions to sea level rise,” Davis said. “This study suggests that the interior areas of the ice sheet also can play an important role. In particular, the East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest in the world and contains enough mass to raise sea level by more than 50 meters. Thus, only small changes in its interior can have a significant affect on sea level.”
12. James Stepp | 05.16.09
Climate change would be bad enough because of the change it will cause in the Lat/Long that certain types of plants grow in. That alone, while it may not seem like a big deal, is enough to bring back something that the Western world hasn’t seen in centuries, food disruptions and starvation. However, that is the least of our problems from atmospheric carbon loading (Newt Gengritch’s term). The human race can survive climate change, we cannot survive ocean acidification without living in a bubble.
Ocean acidification is not debated by scientists or “doubters” for two reasons, it is happening and the science is so well understood that nobody can doubt it. For all the global warming doubters that just love listening to people “debunk” man made global warming, step up and doubt ocean acidification. Pretty please. With sugar on top and little sprinkles. Possibly with whipped cream.
Start studying the effects of ocean acidification and then come talk to us when you realize that, whether you believe in man made climate change or not, we cannot continue to load carbon into the atmosphere without eventually taking the Earth out of the environment range that supports human life. What are you going to do, buy the air you breath?
Between 50-70% of the oxygen we breath is produced by phytoplankton in the ocean! Phytoplankton are plants and they need shells to grow but if the acidity goes too low in the surface waters then they cannot survive. This is already happening and with India and China building so many coal fired plants it’s going to get much much worse. If it continues, you will dream, fantasize, even wish for the problems attributed to man made global warming.
Is this the planet we want to leave our children?
13. Ryan | 05.16.09
Ralph and Derek, John is right. It’s called an ice SHELF for a reason; most of the ice sits upon land. If warming breaks the ice, much of falls off the shelf and spills into the ocean, thus adding to ocean volume.
Your “experiments” would be more relevant if we were talking about ice floating on water, but we are not. Learn the basics before you are bold enough to criticize the scientists.
14. PIM | 05.17.09
well to all the scientist out there?? what happens when you put a bunch of steel in the water?? it rises does it not?? do you know how many ships barges and pleasure boats are in the oceans?? come on guys a 5 year old knows when his bath water is full of toys it rises…..
15. George Bruce | 05.17.09
Even 3.3 meters is rather alarming, and we should be all alarmed, except for the facts that:
1. The Antarctic is not melting, when taken as a whole, and in fact the total ice mass is much greater that its historical average and is increasing.
2. It is normal for chunks of the ice, even big chunks to break off. It happens all the time. Otherwise the Titanic would still be sailing.
3. Sea levels are not rising.
Other than that, we should be very alarmed.
16. E. Turner | 05.17.09
Something missing from all those comments,
Where do you think all that mass of water will go? It will all bulge towards the equator by the moon’s gravity, and while there increase the tides exponentially, and be pushed by the prevailing winds.
Its not simply about the estimated volume of water from the ice being added to some static, ubiquitous ’sea level’, that water is going into a dynamic system. For every centimeter the sea level rises in the polar regions, how much more than that do you think it will rise in the tropics?
17. stopher | 05.17.09
annual human-produced co2 is a small fraction of what is produced from a small volcano event. we have thousands of volcano events per year; some continuous ! …not to mention the thermal impact of underwater geologic events.
we can’t do anything about cap melt. reducing co2 is a reactive fanatic micro approach that is latent and ineffective, compared to the note above on volcano activity
i am pondering whether cap melts will move to the equator ?
the earth is a large centrifuge for which cap melt will have a tendency to live in the equator.
In response, the earth will slow its spin causing a cooling of the earth.
I am also pondering the magnetic implications, but that is another discussion.
I have to believe this has happened before, but I don’t see the public being introduced to these lines of thought. WHY NOT ?
18. Jason Meyers | 05.17.09
Volcano, Not Global Warming Effects, May be Melting an Antarctic Glacier
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/whats-up-with-volcanoes-under-arctic-sea-ice/
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/volcanoes-and-antarctic-warming/
19. Alfred Hussein Neuman | 05.17.09
I am not as smart as most of the people who have posted comments on this website, but it does look like when the evidence of increased CO2 didn’t fit the “planet is cooling” model of the 1970’s, the same scientists used the same facts to show the planet is warming. Since temperatures are reported to be slightly cooler over the last 8 years (even though more CO2 is in the air), maybe there will be a shift back to an new ice age.
20. Dan Kegel | 05.17.09
Stopher, according to
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html
human-produced CO2 emissions are about 100x larger
than the total volcanic CO2 emissions.
http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans
also points out that if what you said were true,
one would expect to see spikes in atmospheric CO2
following volcanic eruptions, but there don’t seem
to be any.
21. Nostradamus | 05.17.09
Let nature be nature and run it’s course. Sea levels rising? Well, since it’s happening gradually, now is a good time to move away from the sea. What else needs to be said about this topic? Every time I read one of these stories I’m left amazed at how moronic people are about all of this. We live on an UNSTABLE planet, there are earthquakes, tsunamis, volcano’s, plagues, wars, famines, icebergs melting, etc. Go with the flow! (bad pun, but hey it fits!)
If people don’t like earthquakes, or wildfires, don’t move to LA. If you don’t like diverse cultures, don’t move to a neighborhood with diversity. If you don’t like people who do drugs, don’t be a drug user. If you want to live in a safer area of the planet, figure it out! If you are broke and tired of being poor, find something you like to do and either get more education or an apprenticeship. What is the issue with people being really dumb in this modern age?
Icebergs melting? Well wooop-de-dooo!! It’s better than an asteroid slamming into us, or Niburu the legendary planet full of seething reptilians in their saucers ready to enslave all of us! And just for the record, why would humans be relevant to anyone, especially an advanced inter-stellar traveling civilization? Has anyone figured out why humanity would be relevant to anyone? Why? If their civilization is so technologically advanced, they surely have robotics. They won’t need slaves. So what is the issue with all of this! The issue is that people are stuck on themselves as being relevant, but we are not relevant. Not even to nature apparently, since all indications seem to point to the fact that regardless of greenhouse gases contributed by humanity, or cows etc, its all part of a natural cycle to begin with!
So keep in mind that humanity IS NOT relevant, not even to itself. We are not heroes, least of all to nature, and nature in turn is blissfully going about its own business.
22. Fred Fighter | 05.17.09
An ice shelf floats on water.
An ice sheet rests on land.
A melting ice shelf has negligible effect on sea level, not so for an
ice sheet.
23. Perry Celsus | 05.17.09
I can already hear the objections coming from the pointed-headed intellectuals directed against us in the global-warming-denier community. To #14 George Bruce’s claim that “…The Antarctic is not melting, when taken as a whole, and in fact the total ice mass is much greater that its historical average and is increasing…” they will ask where this idea came from, they will ask for peer-reviewed evidence for such a bold and incredible assertion. They don’t get it. Boldness is enough. That’s what needed to fight this international conspiracy. The concept of peer-review –indeed, the very idea of science itself — is a United Nations plot to destroy America.
To #17 stropher’s “,,,I don’t see the public being introduced to these lines of thought. WHY NOT ?…” they will say “because these ‘lines of thought’ are ridiculous, crack-pot ideas.” Well, fie on them, with their fancy-pants PhD’s and their prizes from socialist Sweden. Read, read carefully the comments posted here from all of us in the denier community. The level of our intelligence will be obvious to one and all.
24. Dr. Mixitup | 05.17.09
Have a big pipe connecting one of the oceans and space. The international space station can suck up the excess water and dump it into space.
25. Robert | 05.17.09
Sea levels not rising??? Oh..I see…those islands and deltas are sinking. It’s amazing what one can learn from their fellow man
27. Ed Mcleod | 05.17.09
The area of Buffalo, New York and Toronto, Ontario was covered by the Wisconsin Glacier 12000 Years ago. That glacier in this area was 2 to 3 km thick. 2 to 3 km thick….think about it. What caused the great glaciers of the not so distant past to melt and leave behind these geological remnants. Great Lakes, Niagara falls and escarpment…..it wasn’t Ford, Chevy and Toyota that caused the glaciers or their demise. Canada and Russia have plenty of land mass to help any human displaced by 3 meters……….People must think for themselves.
28. Christopher Smallwood | 05.17.09
The original post was solidly and honestly presented. I have to say that I am a bit alarmed, however, at the scientific inaccuracy of several of theses comments.
Sea level rise due to the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could have real impacts on the United States. It is not analogous to an ice cube in a bathtub, as previous comments have stated, and the part of the WAIS that is below sea level was not included in the calculation published in Science. To quote the paper: “The volume of ice in the [region of interest] above sea level was summed, excluding floating ice shelves, by using the ice surface digital elevation model with respect to the geoid…We also considered the impact of an acceleration in ice motion for the outlet glaciers in East Antarctica that flow into the ice shelves that have been removed.”
I think it is perhaps more interesting to note that the majority of sea level rise (about 55 percent) already observed over the past 50 years has been due not to melting ice, but to the ocean’s thermal expansion (cf. the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report at http://www.ipcc.ch, the definitive authority on global climate change). Perhaps that means reversing a rising sea level would be easier to do if we fail to be proactive.
29. NeilG | 05.18.09
Who cares why things are warming. It is obvious that sea levels are rising. Idiots on all sides of this issue are making sure nothing will be done before a global disaster happens.
It is apparent that within my grandchildrens lifetimes the world will be unable to support the number of humans currently alive. This will be because of disruptions in the food supply from salt water intrusions and acidification of the oceans.
This has all happened before. Humans were not around then and humans will not be around in the same numbers or comfort they are in today.
30. thenemo1 | 05.18.09
Y2K was a tech glitch which they worked on way ahead of time no one did it with billions of cars and factories spewing this carbon into the air.
31. Jeff | 05.18.09
OK, this post is directed to all doubters about sea level rise and humanity’s effect on global warming. Even if you are right and prevailing science is wrong, why NOT cut down on emissions? Does anyone believe that pollution is a good thing?
Even if the best case scenario occurs and there is no global warming and no rising sea levels and no ocean acidification and no plankton die-off and no disruption of global food chains, isn’t it better for people’s health to not breathe pollution? All those who disagree, please go into your garage, start up your car and think about it for a few minutes.
32. Bill M | 05.18.09
It’s surprising how many Monitor readers think think global warming is a hoax. Maybe it’s just that those readers are more apt to write comments.
33. shock and awe | 05.18.09
“The East and West Coasts of North America would see increases 25 percent higher than the global average”
Hmmmm….say what?????….Why? Terrorists have found a way to get water climb higher, 25% higher, on our shores (sea level) than the rest of the world. well….except India
34. mightycpa | 05.18.09
If Venice and New Orleans can survive, so can Manhattan.
Soon enough, Chicken Little’s children will soon be worrying about the “unprecedented accumulation of ice on the ice sheet, that will potentially result in a global average sea level reduction of 3.3 meters.”
35. jksisco | 05.18.09
If a half white, half black man with very little pertinent experience can get elected to the most demanding executive position on the planet based on a ” hope and change” platform, then I expect that half the people in this world will believe the Earth is being warmed by strictly man-made causes with dire consequences for all unless we do “something” drastic. And why exactly, with the overwhelming majority of information coming out of the UN, which is suspect from the git-go, as is anything that is funded through grants from Governments or Universities, it’s all tainted conclusion designed to support an agenda, that truly believes they are powerful enough to save a planet from destruction that’s 4 billion years old and has already had several epoch climate episodes. Show me a person who will put up their own money and subject their conclusions to a wide and varied peer-review, then I will believe!
36. jeff | 05.19.09
#35 jksisco Please go back to your camp in the woods. Nobody wants to hear your bigoted paranoia.
37. Nigel Williams | 05.30.09
All the previous ice melt episodes have been driven by tiny changes in the Earth’s energy balance. The rate of change induced then was very small - a tenth of a degree a century would be very fast during those events.
This time the forcing is going to see the world warm by somewhere between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius by 2100 AD.
http://globalchange.mit.edu/news/news-item.php?id=76
This rate of change is completely unprecedented in the Earth’s geological history. Thus reviewing earlier events only gives us partial knowledge about what is to come. We have no idea about what will actually happen this time, other than it will be worse and faster than it has ever happened in the past.
Have a look at my blog for more information.
http://the100metreline.blogspot.com/
38. unsmart | 06.05.09
If I fill my soda glass full of ice and the rest with water and let it melt, will my cup overflow? For some reason it doesn’t? Maybe it is because water expands and takes up more area when it is frozen, so when it melts the water level actually goes down. The would make for a lame movie though. Everyone should go buy 4en 4y8rid kars b4 its tooooo laaaaate….. Yes We Can.
39. E. Turner | 06.14.09
unsmart (lol)
They physics of floating ice have been addressed here, and [most] everywhere else.
Its a strawman argument fit only for wingnut radio and its hosts (entertainers)who are only slightly more clever than their core audience(s), aka the croaking limphibians and false-conservatives with their mob-frenzied, amnesic duck-speak drivel.
The article, and the actual issue, is the melt of ice that is now locked up above land, and what its introduction into the dynamic will or will not cause.
Note: I am very much a Christian, and I actually am a REAL Conservative as well. I don’t buy into anything and everything my favorite striped talking head for the symbiotic political duopoly spews forth. They are simply the left and right clay feet of the same beast, marching us in the same down-ward spiral direction. I actually go and learn things and understand things, becuase, as a Christian Conservative its my Right, my Heritage, my Duty and my Burden to do exactly that.
Regardless of why, who caused it, what can or can’t be done about it,,, natural or not,,, the climate IS changing, things WILL change. Its not against the Creator to recognize what Creation is doing, what is happening to it. It has been Foretold.
41. E. Turner | 07.27.09
Just in from the BBC;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8167209.stm
(Oh, and please excuse the typo’s in my last post, I should proof-read a bit more).
42. Perspective | 08.14.09
No-body is denying that the climate on Planet Earth has not heated up (or cooled down) throughout its long history.
However during the last 14,000 years the earth has had one of its most stable periods in terms of temperature with small fluctuations of only 1 degree centigrade - this coincides directly to the stable period of ‘civilisation’ as we know it
1/2 c rise in temperature in the last 50 short years is unprecedented change. The risk is that this alarming trend in rising temperatures will have runaway impacts. Sea level rises will be the least of many species problems.
This is a time for drastic action to mitigate against the worst, not a time to act smug…
43. Matthew | 09.28.09
I am only a freshman in highschool, but enjoy reading you guys argue. You guys really do have some good points, but if the ice were to melt, and cause the sea to rise a tiny bit, and supposedly cause the climate to even get warmer, wouldnt that cause the water level to get lower? Think, higher tempeture, more evaporation, less water. That would also cause deserts to shrink and no more water shortages. But i personally think that “man made” global warming is a hoax.
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1. chris | 05.15.09
how do you keep the ice from melting? note: it’s not the air that surrounds it…that’s at sub freezing temps. The problem is in 2 places. The sunlight that does hit them (radiation making the molecules of frozen water move and break the frozen bonds) and the warmer water surrounding the ice. Block out the sun, put liquid nitrogen into the water, and you have stopped the thaw, for now.
Sorry, but I don’t view the melt as a bad thing, only part of a cycle….it’s happened before…long before humans, and it was only a matter of time before it happens again.