Researchers have confirmed for the first time that Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica could cross tipping points, leading to a rapid and irreversible retreat which would have significant consequences for global sea level
NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY
Researchers have confirmed for the first time that Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica could cross tipping points, leading to a rapid and irreversible retreat which would have significant consequences for global sea level.
Pine Island Glacier is a region of fast-flowing ice draining an area of West Antarctica approximately two thirds the size of the UK. The glacier is a particular cause for concern as it is losing more ice than any other glacier in Antarctica.
Currently, Pine Island Glacier together with its neighbouring Thwaites glacier are responsible for about 10% of the ongoing increase in global sea level.
Scientists have argued for some time that this region of Antarctica could reach a tipping point and undergo an irreversible retreat from which it could not recover. Such a retreat, once started, could lead to the collapse of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by over three metres.
While the general possibility of such a tipping point within ice sheets has been raised before, showing that Pine Island Glacier has the potential to enter unstable retreat is a very different question.
Now, researchers from Northumbria University have shown, for the first time, that this is indeed the case.
Their findings are published in leading journal, The Cryosphere.
Using a state-of-the-art ice flow model developed by Northumbria’s glaciology research group, the team have developed methods that allow tipping points within ice sheets to be identified.
For Pine Island Glacier, their study shows that the glacier has at least three distinct tipping points. The third and final event, triggered by ocean temperatures increasing by 1.2C, leads to an irreversible retreat of the entire glacier.
The researchers say that long-term warming and shoaling trends in Circumpolar Deep Water, in combination with changing wind patterns in the Amundsen Sea, could expose Pine Island Glacier’s ice shelf to warmer waters for longer periods of time, making temperature changes of this magnitude increasingly likely.
The lead author of the study, Dr Sebastian Rosier, is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Northumbria’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences. He specialises in the modelling processes controlling ice flow in Antarctica with the goal of understanding how the continent will contribute to future sea level rise.
Dr Rosier is a member of the University’s glaciology research group, led by Professor Hilmar Gudmundsson, which is currently working on a major £4million study to investigate if climate change will drive the Antarctic Ice Sheet towards a tipping point.
Dr Rosier explained: “The potential for this region to cross a tipping point has been raised in the past, but our study is the first to confirm that Pine Island Glacier does indeed cross these critical thresholds.
“Many different computer simulations around the world are attempting to quantify how a changing climate could affect the West Antarctic Ice Sheet but identifying whether a period of retreat in these models is a tipping point is challenging.
“However, it is a crucial question and the methodology we use in this new study makes it much easier to identify potential future tipping points.”
Hilmar Gudmundsson, Professor of Glaciology and Extreme Environments worked with Dr Rosier on the study. He added: “The possibility of Pine Island Glacier entering an unstable retreat has been raised before but this is the first time that this possibility is rigorously established and quantified.
“This is a major forward step in our understanding of the dynamics of this area and I’m thrilled that we have now been able to finally provide firm answers to this important question.
“But the findings of this study also concern me. Should the glacier enter unstable irreversible retreat, the impact on sea level could be measured in metres, and as this study shows, once the retreat starts it might be impossible to halt it.”
###
The paper, The tipping points and early warning indicators for Pine island Glacier, West Antarctica, is now available to view in The Cryosphere.
Northumbria is fast becoming the UK’s leading university for research into Antarctic and extreme environments.
As well as the £4m tipping points study, known as TiPPACCs, Northumbria is also the only UK university to play a part in two projects in the £20m International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration – the largest joint project undertaken by the UK and USA in Antarctica for more than 70 years – where Northumbria is leading the PROPHET and GHC projects. This particular study was funded through both TiPPACCs and PROPHET.
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<blockquote>IMAGE: DR SEBASTIAN ROSIER AT PINE ISLAND GLACIER IN 2015 view more CREDIT: DR SEBASTIAN ROSIER</blockquote>
He seems quite pleased with himself.
You would too if you had just blagged £4m for an all-expenses-paid holiday to Antarctica.
They do love their “tipping points” don’t they?
Always fabricating a mythical point of “irreversible” doom! And nature always reveals them to be the unethical arrogant fools they are.
“Many different computer simulations around the world ” wow, group think at work!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04421-3 “Evidence of an active volcanic heat source beneath the Pine Island Glacier”
You going to stop a volcano? Good luck with that!
Now a volcano is like someone suddenly and effusively regurgitating their dinner. No way to stop it or put it back where it came from!
Forgive me but I would like something a little more “upmarket” than a computer model from Newcastle Polytechnic before I started to panic!
“University of Northumbria” sounds so much more classy than Newcastle Poly.
So, the glacier is doing exactly what it has been doing for thousands upon thousands of years and this is some sort of problem for some pointy headed idiot who can’t hold a real job? Got it.
I suppose the good news is that the £4m wasted on this crap was not from just British taxpayers but came from EU funding so was shared with others. Small wonder that our universities were Remainer strongholds, notwithstanding that they are also bastions of lefty wokism.
They are the very foundation of leftist bull crap there and here in the US. And they are self perpetuating by heavily seeding the lower level institutions of “learning” with their ground troops which indoctrinate our youth.
I’ve lived on the ocean for over 30 years. It’s not rising.
To be clear, it is rising and falling and going side to side. Ahhh, I’m feeling queasy just thinking about it.
Yup, it’s models all the way down.
“..which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by over three metres.”
Please show your work.
Antarctica covers 14.2 E6 km^2 (NBS equivalents: 20 * Texas, 2,768 * Delaware or 163,218 * Manhattan) with an average ice cap thickness of 1.9 km for a volume of 2.698 E7 km^3. (L*W*H math)
Ice has a density of 9.2 E11 kg/km^3. (engineering)
The Antarctic ice cap (NOT sea ice!) contains 2.482 E19 kg of ice, 2.482 E16 tonne, 24.82 E6 Gt. (science)
Between 2002 and 2012 the Antarctic ice cap “lost” about 1,200 Gt or a decrease of 0.0048%, 48 ppm, per decade. (technology)
At that rate the ice cap will be all gone in 206,850 years. (more math)
I don’t plan on waiting around.
You?
Every year the SEA ICE swings from around 3E6 km^2 during summer to 14E6 km^2 (doubling in size) during winter. (technology)
Thwaites glacier is 192,000 km^2 or about 1.3% of the ice cap.
Yawn!!!!!
“which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by over three metres.”
Since my house is 4.5 meters above sea level I really don’t care. It will make a walk to the beach that much shorter.
“One area of particular concern is the Amundsen Sea region. Pine Island (PIG) and Thwaites glaciers, the two largest glaciers in the area,
are believed to be
particularly vulnerable to MISI…”
i.e. voices in someone’s head.
‘ should the glacier enter unstable irreversible retreat “… its nice knowing that apparently this is not happening .
Appendix A of their paper shows the x-axis timeline of their “simulation” having units of kyr.
Is that THOUSANDS of English years or metric years?
From the above article:
“Using a state-of-the-art ice flow model developed by Northumbria’s glaciology research group . . . The potential for this region to cross a tipping point has been raised in the past, but our study is the first to confirm that Pine Island Glacier does indeed cross these critical thresholds . . . The possibility of Pine Island Glacier entering an unstable retreat has been raised before but this is the first time that this possibility is rigorously established and quantified.” (my bold emphasis added)
So, what is now being claimed is that “state-of-the-art” computer models can now provide “rigorous” proof of scientific possibilities. Who knew?
The stupidity of such . . . it burns.
When they use LOTS of fossil fuels to go there….that is a tipping point, that they are virtue signalling, no matter the fossil fuels used.
So all glaciers are a non-renewable?
While the general possibility of such a tipping point within ice sheets has been raised before, showing that Pine Island Glacier has the potential to enter unstable retreat is a very different question.
In other words, they’re speculating.
“for the first time” – A favorite prideful, wearisome phrase of university communications offices, who write these “science” blurbs. Let’s keep a count of how many times this phrase is used in such publications. I tried searching the WUWT archives and got thousands of hits. One question that comes to mind is, “WAS this REALLY the first time, based on an exhaustive search of all human knowledge?” Doubtful. It brings to mind the words commonly attributed to King Solomon (we don’t know for certain if he was really the author),
“9 What has been, it is what will be,
And what has been done, it is what will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
It has already existed for ages
Which were before us.
11 There is no remembrance of the earlier things,
And of the later things as well, which will occur,
There will be no remembrance of them
Among those who will come later still.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
Many of the comments here regarding this article reflect the critics’ observations that the authors exhibited a serious lack of remembrance and of perspective.
Pride and bloviating sell grants, and that is the business model of 21st century universities. Each is in the business of gaining market share of OPM. Within that framework, each principal investigator is an independent entrepreneur, where the most successful snake-oil salesmen (not necessarily the best scientists) get the most grants and notoriety (e.g., Mann, Dessler, Hayhoe). Many brilliant scientists pursuing the academic research track quickly learn that it is not about the science, so they abandon higher education for more meaningful, rewarding and honest pursuits. Through my brief years on this earth, I have known several world-class scientists who either beat the system or found much more meaningful work outside of academic research.
Why don’t these press releases and announcements like to the actual journal article?
https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/1501/2021/
per the question above, it does not use climate scenarios – such as RCP8.5.
“could”
The whole concept of a “Tipping Point,” with irreversible consequences, is a misnomer. If it were possible for any environmental process to transition rapidly to a stable state from which it could not recover, it would already have happened after 4.5 billion years, and we would be stuck in that state today.
It is possible to have extreme transient states, such as an “Ice House,” or a “Hot House.” However, even an area as vast as the Sahara Desert was verdant not all that long ago, and is showing signs of retreat at its margins, thanks to increasing CO2.
“Tipping Point” is just another of the phrases promoted by alarmists, such as “ocean acidification,” and “Sixth Mass Extinction,” intended to scare people and have them react emotionally, rather than objectively consider the evidence.
I personally take offense at other people trying to manipulate me!
We see this same thing happening with increased frequency today. It’s the standard fair of The Left. Manipulating people with language is possibly the most emphatic warning from reading Orwell and the basis of Marxist indoctrination.
“I personally take offense at other people trying to manipulate me!”
What about those “obedience collars” we’re forced to wear, called masks? So many of the illiterate are wearing them in cars, while alone outside and they are the real problem!
There are many people — some of whom one might even call bright — that don’t bother to think about what they do. Then, there are others that don’t understand the problem and just go along with the program. I give them credit for at least trying to help, even if the effort is wasted.
Get used to it. Daily scare tactics prior to this year’s IPCC conference. Every day something new and scarier.
I like the “Another scary story, scarier than the last scary story” line that I saw here years ago.
Great Doom Sayers,best they have is coulda woulda ,models are evidence..
As a thought experiment..Imagine what the equivalent of these doomsters woulda said 10 to 20 thousand years ago as the Laurentide Ice Sheet began its retreat..
Must a been Wooly Rhino Flatulence what done .
In such times of massive sea level raises,flooding of low lying lands and forced retreat from the tides,legends are born.
A back of napkin calculation gave me an “Ice retreat” of 9 inches/year from 2/3 of the North American continent…”Unprecedented Warming”
Doom Doom Doom.
Irreversible, just like the dozens of previous glacial retreats since Pleistocene glaciation began.
Yet another edition of “Worse than We thought!” Brought to you by vested interests with grants to justify.
Even if true, and glacial collapse proceeds, we are talking thousands of years for the scenario to play out. Big system = slow process.
But long before that can happen the Holocene Interglacial will have come to an end, and an other 100,000-year plus glacial cycle begun. That die is already cast.