The record melting on the largest ice floe in the world scares climatologists

A study shows that some of the world's largest ice shelf melts 10 times faster than expected, due to the warming of the sea that surrounds it.

The discovery suggests that the Ross Ice Shelf, a floating Antarctic ice sheet the size of France moving forward in the ocean, is more vulnerable to global warming than it was thought before.

Loss of pack ice removes barriers to glaciers that carry water to the ocean, allowing sea level rise. A team from Cambridge University spent several years studying the interactions between the area. northwest of Ross Flats and the ocean below.

Former Cambridge scientist Craig Stewart, currently at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, said: "Ice shelf stability is generally thought to be related to their exposure to Warm and deep waters of the ocean, "We have found that surface waters heated by the sun also play a crucial role in melting ice.

The team took measurements of temperature, salinity, melting rate and ocean currents using instruments in a 260-meter (850-foot) borehole. Four-year data was also collected in an oceanographic mooring under the pack ice. In addition, a custom radar system was used to monitor changes in ice thickness.

The instruments showed that the surface water heated by the sun flowed into the cavity under the pack ice, which almost tripled the melting rates in summer.

Dr. Stewart added, "Climate change is likely to result in a decrease in sea ice and an increase in sea surface temperature in the Ross Sea, suggesting that melting rates in this region will increase in the future. 'to come up."

The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience. Poul Christoffersen, co-author of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, noted that collapse of ice shelves can double or triple the rate at which glaciers fall into the ocean.

"The difference here is the sheer size of Ross's pack ice, which is more than 100 times larger than the pack ice that we've already seen disappear," he said.

"The observations we made at the front of the pack ice have direct consequences for many large glaciers flowing in the pack ice, some 900 km (559 miles).