An image showing ice flowing into the ocean and forming an ice shelf in Antarctica. (NB: This image is not of Pine Island Glacier itself, but it is representative of how Pine Island Glacier is behaving). Credit: Professor Hilmar Gudmundsson
The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica has experienced an irreversible retreat, crossing a tipping point in the past 80 years, according to a recent study.
The findings, which were published in the influential journal The Future of Ice on Earth group, co-authored the study. He warned that it was potentially a case of luck that the glaciers’ retreat stabilized after a few decades of ice loss due to the topography of the bedrock under the Amundsen Sea.
“This study is about understanding the causes of recent changes in this area, and what we can expect next. The irreversible behavior of the glacier we see in those simulations, is also seen in our future predictions,” he said.
“The implication is that we should be thinking about ice loss from this part of the world not in terms of a gradual measured response to global warming, but as something that, when pushed too far, loses ice on its own accord at an accelerated rate.
“This time the result was that over a period of a few decades, the glacier became the biggest contributor of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to sea level rise. What our models suggest is that passing further tipping points of Pine Island Glacier will cause even larger loss of ice. In that sense, this time we may have got lucky.”
Reference: “Recent irreversible retreat phase of Pine Island Glacier” by Brad Reed, J. A. Mattias Green, Adrian Jenkins and G. Hilmar Gudmundsson, 4 December 2023, Nature Climate Change.
DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01887-y
Researchers from Northumbria University are leading major studies assessing changes in Antarctica, including TiPACCs (Tipping Points in the Antarctic Climate System). This £4 million project is investigating the probability of sudden and large changes in the sea-level contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet due to crossings of tipping points in the marginal seas and the grounding lines of the floating ice shelves that fringe the ice sheet.