Ro
Maritime government
02-02-2020 05:30:53
Researchers have taken the ever-present images of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, a glacier about the size of Florida that is expected to play a major role in future sea level rise.
The images, taken by an underwater robotic vehicle, were part of an extensive set of data collected in several experiments by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration.
Already, Thwaites make up about four percent of global sea level rise. Researchers have been worried that a drop in stability at its bases could cause a fall in the glacier and sea levels of as much as 25 inches.
The area of concern is the so-called underwater vehicle visited, and is important for the stability of the Thwaites Glacier base. This is the line between where the glacier lies on the ocean floor and where it floats over water. The further back the landline shrinks, the faster the ice flows into the sea, pushing up the sea level.
“One of the reasons such work is important is to visit the baseline because we can drive up to it and measure where it is,” said Britney Schmidt, ITGC co-researcher from the Institute Georgia Technologies. “This is the first time anyone has done that or even seen the ground belt of a major underwater glacier, and that’s where the greatest melting and destabilization can take place.”
The underwater robot, Icefin, was invented by Georgia Tech’s laboratory at Schmidt. The Georgia Tech team was part of a larger collaboration between U.S. researchers and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). A BAS hot water drill melted a 590 meter (1,935 ft) deep hole to get to the ocean floor for Icefin.
“Icefin swam over a 15 km (9.3 mile) round of five missions. This involved two passes up to the land zone, including one where we got as close as we could physically to where the seabed meets the ice, ”said Schmidt. “We have seen amazing ice interactions driven by sediments at the line and from rapid melting from warm ocean water. ”
Over the last 30 years, the amount of ice flowing into the sea from Thwaites and the adjacent glaciers has doubled. “While Greenland’s sea levels have already reached alarming levels, Antarctica is now raising its sea level rise,” said Schmidt. “It has the largest ice sheet on Earth and will drive more and more sea levels over the next 100 years and beyond. It is a major source of uncertainty in the climate system. “