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The outer edge of Thwaites Glacier. When the glacier empties into the ocean, it turns into sea ice and leads to sea level.
NASA / James Yungel
Overall average the sea level is high about 20 cm (8 inches) since 1900, with three of those inches in the last quarter century and Coastal floods becoming more common as a result.
But a huge ice cover the size of Florida becomes unstable and could throw itself into the ocean sooner than expected, thus raising the sea level a foot and a half. And all of this assumes that global temperatures remain as they are now and are not continuing to increase.
Spoiler Alert: No one expects these temperatures to stop rising soon.
A new study published this week examined the potential instability within the huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica this could accelerate its inevitable flow into the ocean.
"If you trigger this instability, you do not need to continue forcing the ice cover by raising the temperature. That will continue, and that's the worry, "said Alex Robel, a Georgia Tech professor, who led the NASA-funded study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.& nbsp;
Instability is related to the amount of ice that rests on the ocean floor, as opposed to its extent on the water and its contribution to sea level rise.
"Once the ice has crossed the line of grounding and only & nbsp; above the water, it's & nbsp;contribute to the level of the sea& nbsp; because buoyancy holds her back more than before, "said Robel. "Ice is flowing in the & nbsp;floating ice tray& nbsp; and melts or breaks into an iceberg. "
Once the ice is above the water, it also speeds up the process by which a greater amount of ice above it flows into the sea.
"The process is self-sustaining," said & nbsp;Helene Seroussi, scientist at NASA's JPL, who collaborated in the study. "After reaching the tipping point, Thwaites Glacier could lose all its ice in 150 years. This would make a sea level rise of about half a meter (1.64 feet). "
Perhaps the most pernicious problem is that instability within the icecap may make it particularly difficult to predict future flood risks.
"You want to design critical infrastructure to withstand the upper limit of potential sea level scenarios in a hundred years," said Robel. "It can mean building your water treatment plants and your nuclear reactors in the worst case, which could be a sea level rise in Thwaites Glacier alone, which is a huge difference."
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The outer edge of Thwaites Glacier. When the glacier empties into the ocean, it turns into sea ice and leads to sea level.
NASA / James Yungel
The global average sea level has increased about 20 cm (8 inches) since 1900. Three of these inches have been detected in the past quarter century and coastal flooding has become more common.
But a huge ice cover the size of Florida becomes unstable and could throw itself into the ocean sooner than expected, thus raising the sea level a foot and a half. And all of this assumes that global temperatures remain as they are now and are not continuing to increase.
Spoiler Alert: No one expects these temperatures to stop rising soon.
A new study done this week examined potential instability in the huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica that could accelerate its inevitable flow into the ocean.
"If you trigger this instability, you do not need to continue forcing the ice cover by raising the temperature. That will continue, and that's the worry, "said Alex Robel, a Georgia Tech professor, who led the NASA-funded study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Instability is related to the amount of ice that rests on the ocean floor, as opposed to its extent on the water and its contribution to sea level rise.
"Once the ice has passed over the ground line and only above the water, it contributes to the sea level because the buoyancy holds it more than it used to be" said Robel. "The ice pours on the floating ice floe and melts or breaks into an iceberg."
Once the ice is above the water, it also speeds up the process by which a greater amount of ice above it flows into the sea.
"The process is self-sustaining," said Helene Seroussi, a scientist at NASA's JPL, who collaborated on the study. "After reaching the tipping point, Thwaites Glacier could lose all its ice in 150 years. This would make a sea level rise of about half a meter (1.64 feet). "
Perhaps the most pernicious problem is that instability within the icecap may make it particularly difficult to predict future flood risks.
"You want to design critical infrastructure to withstand the upper limit of potential sea level scenarios in a hundred years," said Robel. "It can mean building your water treatment plants and your nuclear reactors in the worst case, which could be a sea level rise in Thwaites Glacier alone, which is a huge difference."