We break insurance coverage of the current disaster to inform you that a great but slow - locomote calamity has not taken a vacation . A major glacier in East Antarctica has pull in one’s horns 5.4 kilometer ( 3.3 miles ) in 22 years , satellite watching have revealed .
Despite a handful of exception driven by local conditions , the vast majority of the planet ’s river of ice arein hideaway . However , a finding from East Antarctica propose more than half the world ’s ice is put away up in this one region – enough to enkindle ocean stage by 1.5 cadence ( 5 feet ) . Several component also make it one of the most resistant part of the major planet to global warming - induced melt , so if glaciers are crawfish there , nowhere is good .
A paper inGeophysical Research Lettersreports that the Denman Glacier has lose 5 km ( 3 miles ) of distance between 1996 and 2018 . Since 1979 , 268 billion tons of the glacier ’s ice has fade , a book sufficient to cover all of England more than 2 metre ( 7 foot ) deep .
The Denman holds around 3 percent of East Antarctica ’s Methedrine – on its own it could supply 1.5 meters ( 5 infantry ) to ball-shaped sea level . The expression “ glacial step ” may need reworking .
“ East Antarctica has long been thought to be less threaten , but as glaciers such as Denman have fare under closer scrutiny by the cryosphere science community , we are now beginning to see grounds of potential leatherneck chalk sheet instability in this region , ” saidProfessor Eric Rignotof the University of California , Irvine , in astatement . “ The ice in West Antarctica has been melting faster in recent age , but the bluff size of Denman Glacier intend that its potential wallop on recollective - term ocean stratum rise is just as pregnant . ”
The retreat has n’t been noticed before because to most observers the boundary between the glacier itself and the Shackleton Ice Shelf is invisible . However , the Denman exsert as much as 3.5 kilometers ( 2.2 mile ) down into thedeepest continental canyonon Earth , where it touches fundamentals . As the satellite heats up , it is this submarine component that is melting , leaving only a much thinner spit of sea - ice extending into the ocean . Rignot and colleagues used the Italian Space Agency ’s COSMO - SkyMed artificial satellite ' radar content to study the profoundness beneath the glacier and equate its ground line with older observations .
The retreat would have been even more extensive if a subglacial ridgeline was not hold the easterly flank in office . unluckily , the western flank not only lack any similar stabilizing strength at the glacier ’s current front but the underwater trough only gets deeper behind it , allowing the glacier to keep on retreating if thawing go on .
A nonaged comfort is that low nearby glaciers that Rignot studied appear more static .
