Antarctic Ice Shelves Face Major Threat If CO2 Emissions Keep Rising

A new study says that many of Antarctica’s floating ice shelves — which play a key role in holding back vast amounts of land-based ice — could become highly unstable later this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not sharply reduced. An international team of researchers, reporting in Nature Geoscience, said that surface melting of Antarctica’s ice shelves could reach the point where many could disintegrate. Such surface melting has already led to the collapse of numerous ice shelves along the rapidly warming Antarctic Peninsula. The study said that surface melting of the continent’s ice sheets would double by 2050 under both intermediate- and high-emissions scenarios. After that, the fate of the ice shelves diverges sharply depending on emissions levels, with a high-emissions scenario leading to surface melting equaling or exceeding intensities associated with ice shelf collapse. Loss of the ice shelves could lead to major increases in sea level as inland glaciers flow to the sea, scientists say.