The vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet holds enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 to 5 meters if it melts completely.
The vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet holds enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 to 5 meters if it melts completely. It is protected on one side by the Ross Ice Shelf, the world’s largest floating ice mass, that serves as a buttress slowing the flow of glaciers and ice streams towards the sea. As our climate warms, the Ross Ice Shelf is becoming increasingly vulnerable, but there is uncertainty around what global temperature increase will trigger unsustainable melting of the shelf, and the subsequent loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Retrieving a geological record to provide direct evidence of this temperature tipping point is the challenge driving the SWAIS2C (Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2°C) project, a collaboration between 10 countries (New Zealand, the United States, Germany, Australia, Italy, Japan, Spain, Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) involving more than 120 scientists. This group includes glaciologist Jonathan Kingslake, geochemist Sidney Hemming, geodynamicist Jacqueline Austermann, sediment expert Brendan Reilly and graduate student Sam Chester, all from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School.
An on-ice team of 29 scientists (including Chester), drillers, engineers and Antarctic field specialists have embarked on the project’s third attempt to drill for a 200 meter sediment core—a series of cylindrical samples of mud and rocks—from the bedrock deep beneath 500 meters of ice at the Crary Ice Rise on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Read More at: Columbia Climate School
Crary Ice Rise traverse departure. (Photo Credit: Anthony Powell)
