How a Massive Wall in Antarctica Could Hold Back Sea-Level Rise

Stephanie Pappas.

Glaciers are mighty rivers of ice that can carry boulders on their backs and grind valleys into rugged mountain ranges. But now, scientists say that humans might need to think about trying to engineer these formidable forces of nature.

Propping up glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic might be the most targeted — and, amazingly, the cheapest — way to slow sea-level rise in a warming world, according to a new paper in the journal The Cryosphere. A seawall, or even just a series of artificial seamounts for the glacier to get stuck against, could hold back unimaginable amounts of meltwater, the research suggests.

Read the story by Stephanie Pappas from LiveScience - “How a Massive Wall in Antarctica Could Hold Back Sea-Level Rise.”

The Rocky Mountains' Largest Glaciers Are Melting with Little Fanfare

WIND RIVER RANGE, Wyo. — Here at the roof of the Continental Divide, one of the Rocky Mountains' largest glaciers is in retreat.

Wyoming’s Wind River range.

A new world is emerging in the wake of the receding ice. In a vast, glacially carved basin, where towering spires of granite dominate the skyline, a small colony of stunted Engelmann spruce has taken up residence in a pile of rocky debris, some 500 feet above the tree line. Bees flit among the yellow mountain asters dotting the boulder field at the glacier's base. Grass grows along a stream where there was, until recently, only snow and ice.

“It's a different place today,” Darran Wells, an outdoor education professor at Central Wyoming College, observed from a research camp near the base of the Dinwoody Glacier on a recent evening. A regular visitor to the glacier over the last two decades, Wells offered a succinct take on its evolution over his nightly meal, a dehydrated serving of shepard's potato stew with beef.

Read the Scientific American story - “The Rocky Mountains' Largest Glaciers Are Melting with Little Fanfare.”

New Antarctic heat maps to improve predictions of sea level rise

Previous calculations of heat from crustal rocks beneath ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica have assumed constant heat emitted from the decay of radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium. But as Tom Raimondo and Jacqui Halpin explain, these elements vary in concentration which leads to variations in heat released under glaciers and ice sheets. More heat means more melting and more slippage of ice. 

Geologist Jacqui Halpin in the David Range
near Mawson Station in the Antarctica. 

Now a new heat map has been produced for the Antarctic Peninsula and work is proceeding to produce more detailed maps for the entire continent. The added detail, some of which can be obtained from deposits in Australia once joined to rocks in Antarctica will enable more accurate predictions of ice melt, a major contributor to sea level rise.

Listen to this story from the Science Show ion Radio National - “New Antarctic heat maps to improve predictions of sea level rise.”

The crack in this Antarctic ice shelf just grew by 17 kilometres. A break could be imminent

The current location of the rift on Larsen C, as of
January 2017. Labels highlight significant jumps.
 Tip positions are derived from Landsat (USGS)
 and Sentinel-1 InSAR (ESA) data. Background
 image blends BEDMAP2 Elevation (BAS) with
MODIS MOA2009 Image mosaic (NSIDC).
Other data from SCAR ADD and OSM.

An enormous rift in one of Antarctica's largest ice shelves grew dramatically over the past month, and a massive chunk more than twice the size of the ACT could break away as soon as later this summer, British scientists reported this week.

If this happens, it could accelerate a further breakup of the ice shelf, essentially removing a massive cork of ice that keeps some of Antarctica's glaciers from flowing into the ocean.

The long term result, scientists project, could be to noticeably raise global sea levels by 10 centimetres, or almost four inches.

It's the latest sign of major ice loss in the fast warming Antarctic Peninsula, which has already seen the breakup of two other shelves in the same region, events that have been widely attributed to climate change.

Read Chris Mooney’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “The crack in this Antarctic ice shelf just grew by 17 kilometres. A break could be imminent.”

Journey to the third pole - 'Crisis on high'

The ancient Silk Road town of Dunghung of north
west China is fed by water from the melting glaciers.

Deep in the Himalayas sits a remote research station that is tracking an alarming trend in climate change, with implications that could disrupt the lives of more than 1 billion people and pitch the most populated region of the world into chaos.

The station lies in the heart of a region called the Third Pole, an area that contains the largest area of frozen water outside of the North Pole and South Pole.

Despite its relative anonymity, the Third Pole is vitally important; it is the source of Asia's 10 largest rivers including the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, the Irrawaddy and the Ganges — and their fertile deltas.

Flows from the glaciers that give the pole its name support roughly 1.3 billion people in China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — and the glaciers are melting fast.

Chinese authorities have opened up a remote research station on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau and revealed alarming research on the pace of global warming.

Half a century of research shows the temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees in the area, more than double the global average. More than 500 glaciers have completely disappeared, and the biggest ones are retreating rapidly.

Read the ABC story by China correspondent Matthew Carney - “Crisis on high.”

The human face of climate change is often hidden

The noise of the melting, crashing glaciers
in Peru adds something of a "human face'.

The human face of climate change rarely shows itself in Australia, at least officially.

Australians, like most others in the world, are becoming normalized to the extreme and different weather that has become a constant companion around the world.

The recent super-cell storm that swept through Brisbane causing damage worth in excess of more than $1 million was described as a “freak storm”.

That, along the simple and definable things such as warmer night’s, which have the finger prints of climate change all over them, are simply morphing into becoming how things are meant to be.

Even though our scientists can clearly define the damage we have caused to earth’s atmosphere, few people are prepared to risk reputation in declaring such events as that in Brisbane as clear evidence of climate change.

Writing in the Age in a story headed: “Annual United Nations climate conference held in Peru, the human face of climate risks” Marcus Priest discusses the human face of climate change in Peru, the venue for next week’s annual United Nations climate conference.

Here is something new - our poles are on the move!

Every day, it seems, there is something new.

Now researchers have detected that the North Pole is drifting.

NewScientist reports in a story headed: “Earth’s poles are shifting because of climate change”, that subtle changes in Earth’s rotation have resulted from the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.

It has been shown that the melting due to greenhouse gas emissions is making its own contribution to the shift.