Scientists call for urgent monitoring of Antarctic ice sheets

Lucy Cormack.

Scientists are calling for urgent monitoring of Antarctic ice shelves, as a new paper finds large areas of ice could lose their land-locked roots if as little as 5 to 13 per cent of the shelves were to disappear.

The paper, by researchers at Germany's Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, is one of the first to quantify the amount of floating ice an Antarctic ice shelf can lose without its grounded portion sliding into the ocean.

An ice shelf is a thick slab of ice which stretches out as an extension of an ice sheet.

Read Lucy Cormack’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Research maps how much ice the Antarctic can afford to lose.”