Stanford researchers have found large thawed or close-to-thawed areas under coastal portions of the ice sheet that holds back glaciers in the Wilkes Subglacial Basin.
Stanford researchers have found large thawed or close-to-thawed areas under coastal portions of the ice sheet that holds back glaciers in the Wilkes Subglacial Basin.
In a warming climate, meltwater from Antarctica is expected to contribute significantly to rising seas. For the most part, though, research has been focused on West Antarctica, in places like the Thwaites Glacier, which has seen significant melt in recent decades.
In a paper published Jan. 19 in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers at Stanford have shown that the Wilkes Subglacial Basin in East Antarctica, which holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than 10 feet, could be closer to runaway melting than anyone realized.
“There hasn’t been much analysis in this region – there’s huge volume of ice there, but it has been relatively stable,” said Eliza Dawson, a PhD student in geophysics at Stanford and first author on the paper. “We’re looking at the temperature at the base of the ice sheet for the first time and how close it is to potentially melting.”
Read more at Stanford University
Image: Collecting ground-based radar data to image kilometers of ice with electromagnetic waves. (Image credit: Eliza Dawson)
