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.”
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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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Wait – they used a “state-of-the-art ice flow model”?
Be still my beating heart!
In the meantime Antarctic sea ice is well above average currently. … http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Only 7th lowest in the satellite era?
Where is griff, this cannot be right
He who pays the Piper calls the tune. If you don’t come to the conclusion those that funded the study want, you don’t get any more funding.
This is, alas, how science funding operates. This comes from a certain close relative with a distinguished academic career. I had asked this certain close relative about 14 years ago -catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, sounds like a load of leftie BS , real science can’t be settled-that’s BS, debate is over-I don’t remember any b…. debate, but why does all the science seem to support it? The answer-if you don’t come to the conclusion those that funded the study want, you don’t get any more funding.
I knew from my own profession that there are conflicts of interest in materials studies-I buy what comes second in all the studies. The penny dropped immediately. As I investigated things deeper, the web of deception grew ever wider.
Unfortunately, humans are as scientifically illiterate and superstitious as in the past. We like to think we have outgrown fear and superstition, but we have not. Humans are as gullible as they have been for millennia. It is only a matter of time before we see public executions of deniers. Think I am joking? Just look at how everyone refuses to call out cancel culture and its persecution of anyone that does not tow the insane anti white, anti everything about OUR culture rubbish.
The most absurd pieces of PC rubbish from a couple of years ago is now enforceable LAW. What do you think would happen to you if you were to say publicly what you thought to yourself when you first heard there were 70 new genders?
We all have to hope those sheep that buy in to PC madness take their COVID vaccines and suffer the later consequences of their folly. Who in their right mind would submit to an untested, experimental vaccine for which the manufacturers are absolved from liability? Who would willingly take such a risk when there are therapeutics that are cheaper, safe and more effective? Who would buy in to becoming a lab rat based on a hyped-up scamdemic?
Look at the modus operandi of cAGW and COVID. They are the same- science for hire “studies”, media hype, “the science is settled”, the debate is over, persecution for going against the narrative…….The similarities are disturbing.
“The third and final event, triggered by ocean temperatures increasing by 1.2C, leads to an irreversible retreat of the entire glacier.”
That is almost as much temperature change as is predicted in the atmosphere. Observed ocean temperature changes are in the .01 range.
They are likely referring to SSTs since the mixed layer is usually what abuts coastal glaciers. The bad news for these alarmist clowns is the SSTs have dropped by .3 C in the last few months. Going the wrong way now to reach their tipping point.
….and I needed a paper published with a catchy title. I also predict volcanic eruptions.
“Using a state-of-the-art ice flow model”
Stop right there. The study proved nothing. It was just computer assisted mathematical onanism. If the authors do not quit, they will go blind.
I think that they are already blind.
The disgraceful thing here is these people claim to be geographers and I don’t see the word ‘volcano’ taken into account in their models anywhere. There are known volcanos under those glaciers, erupting unpredictably. How can you possibly claim to be able to model these glaciers when a volcanic eruption can completely destroy the model due to the utter inability we have to monitor and predict when a volcano will erupt under the Antarctic ice??
Good thing money grows on trees and trees are expanding due to increased CO2.
The sad thing is that their model COULD be very accurate. The problem is it is based on phony projections of temperature increases. Their butts are covered because they simply used the input from Mr. Consensus. He’s the one that should be prosecuted for fraud.
The authors ignore the geological rising of the region. Models are useless if they omit key features.
“Based on our estimates, it {accelerating rising} might produce a deformation large enough and early enough in the deglaciation phase to prevent the complete collapse of the WAIS even under strong climate forcing.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6395/1335
There are also volcanic vents emitting heat under the Pine Island glacier, but (based on the little evidence available), they’re not a big influence.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04421-3
Guess who came to dinner? 91 or more volcanoes. Try and put that into your silly models.
Not only are scientists concerned about tipping points in air temperatures, but they are now concerned about tipping points in ocean temperatures.
They should stop whining about their concerns and do something about it. I recommend injecting huge quantities of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reduce incoming solar energy by increasing the albedo of the earth. This is a known effect of sulfur dioxide as observed when volcanoes erupt.
If someone can come up with a better plan, then lets hear it. But the constant whining like little children is getting old.
Since the last interglacial was warmer than this one (at least so far, based on sea level), their tipping point is not very tippy.
As soon as I read the words “computer model” I completely lost interest.
It is unfortunate the climastrologists are giving computer models such a bad name. They have their place in science and sometimes are even useful.
1. The West Antarctic ice sheet is not now collapsing.
2. Recent acceleration and retreat of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers has occurred because warm ocean water has caused melting of ice on the underside of the glaciers, causing them to thin and calve more rapidly.
3. The basin of the West Antarctic ice sheet is mostly below sea level, but the thickness of almost the entire ice sheet is greater than the depth below sea level so the glacier is everywhere grounded and will remain so.
4. The largest and thickest part of the ice sheet flows away from the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers into the Ross Sea about 1,000 miles to the southeast.
5. The Pine Island and Thwaites outlet glaciers drain less than half of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the greater portion flows in the opposite direction.
6. Melting of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet would take several thousand years and it is doubtful if that is even possible under present conditions.
7. The Pine Island and Thwaites outlet glaciers are only about 30 miles across so draining more than two million km3 of ice through their narrow channels or sending sea water 1,000 miles to the east and 1000 miles to the south under the ice sheet isn’t plausible.
8. The present retreat of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers is being caused by warm ocean water from underneath, not by surface melting.
9. Retreat of the ice sheet is not ‘unstoppable.’ The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers have experienced more pronounced retreat in the past but were able to reverse melting naturally.
10. More dramatic warming (and cooling) occurred in the mid-nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, suggesting that recent outlet glacier retreat has not exceeded the natural range of climate variability of the past 300 years.
11. The slow retreat of the West Antarctica ice sheet is nothing new. Warming and cooling is well within historical limits dating back thousands of years. 8,000 years ago, the Pine Island outlet glacier thinned just as fast as it has in recent decades and later recovered.
12. The West Antarctic ice sheet is NOT collapsing, nor is it likely to in the next several hundred years
13. Sea level is NOT going to rise 10 feet in the next few hundred years because the West Antarctic ice sheet is not collapsing.
It seems to me the old adage “garbage-in, garbage-out” applies here.
You mean that for the entire history of this planet, there has been ice in the form of the Pine Island Glacier? Isn’t that what irreversible implies?
“Researchers have confirmed for the first time that Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica could cross tipping points…”
Тhe same old. You do Not confirm anything with ‘models’ and people that do this kind of stuff are not researchers, especially, innumerate asterisked PhDs in geography. You cannot say “…finally able to provide firm answers…” this is a lie! You even say ‘could’ cause tipping points.
Moreover, it is scientific fr@ud to write stuff designed to scare people like “…draining an area of West Antarctica approximately two thirds the size of the UK.” The area of Antarctica is 58 times that of the UK and 87 times that of 2/3 of the UK!
You compound fr@ud by adding Pine Island to Thwaites saying together they account for 10% of sealevel rise! Thwaites is the largest glacier in Antarctica, so it probably accounts for 3/4 of the 10% rise in SL. You just didn’t want to say that Pine Island contributes a mm/decade of sealevel rise. Shame on you.
The word scientists has come a long way in the long way in the last 30 years. Is there a bottom and if so what does it look like?
The bottom will come when the ‘woke intelligentsia‘ forbid any scientist from responding in any way, to a research article in a peer-reviewed journal, unless it is in support of the politically approved dogma. That is, actual peer review will cease to be a part of the Scientific Method, and one will have to accept that anything that makes it through ‘pal review’ is gospel.
These passages are the relevant “nuggets”.
[ emphasis mine ]
So, we are dealing primarily and most heavily on opinion. We are dealing primarily with an opinion of how to describe a system. Then, we layer upon that, an opinion on what that system will do. That is an awful lot of opinion. Models are really just fancy opinions, aren’t they? They can prognosticate with their opinions (a.k.a. models), but not replicate the past performance of the system that they are purporting to describe. Seems like your opinion would matter more if you had good ability to account for what happened in the past.
What happened to the Helium isotopes which showed geothermal activity below the Pine Island glacier?
“Could” the
scientists“modelers” have more weasel words? “Could” they actually use empirical evidence and observation of the glacier’s input/output budget to “confirm” facts which would support a conclusion?And they used a model of a glacier to somehow ferret out the possibility of a tipping point within a continental ice sheet?
Until these “experts” are correct about /anything/, I’ll continue to ignore their hysteria. They have never successfully predicted anything with their alarmist modeling and never will. That they continue to find venues in/on which to publish their graft says more about the climate change fraud than anything else.
So the glaciers of concern have a total volume of 300,000 cubic MILES? A hummer of a glacier 550 miles long by 550 miles wide by 1 mile deep? That is what is needed to get 3 meters of ocean rise. But check my math.