Sea ice around Antarctica has hit a record low, scientists have reported, with ice expected to shrink even further before the summer melting season ends.
“Remarkable” loss of sea ice in the last six years indicate that record levels of heat are now in the ocean, and the climate crisis is manifesting.
Scientists feared the decline of Antarctic ice as far back as 2014, climate models show, and a giant ice sheet which sits on the continent was set to collapse due to global heating back then, the Guardian reports.
But the increasing loss of sea ice exposes ice sheets and their glaciers to waves that speed up disintegration and melting, researchers have warned.
“I have never seen such an extreme, ice-free situation here before,” Professor Karsten Gohl, from the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told the Guardian.
The expert first visited Antarctica in 1994.
“The continental shelf, an area the size of Germany, is now completely ice-free. It is troubling to consider how quickly this change has taken place.”
US scientists also report a new record low of ice in the region.
Staff at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said that sea ice fell to 1.91m square kilometres on Monday, below the previous record set on February 25, 2022.
The German scientists said intense melting could be due to unusually high air temperatures and strong westerly winds, which increase sea ice retreat.
Meanwhile scientists studying Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier - nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier - say warm water is seeping into its weak spots, worsening melting caused by rising temperatures.
Thwaites, which is roughly the size of Florida, represents more than half a meter of global sea level rise potential, and could destabilise neighboring glaciers.
A team of 13 US and British scientists spent about six weeks on the glacier in late 2019 and early 2020.
Using an underwater robot vehicle known as Icefin, mooring data and sensors, they monitored the glacier’s grounding line, where ice slides off the glacier and meets the ocean for the first time.
In one of the papers, led by Cornell University-based scientist Britney Schmidt, researchers found that warmer water was making its way into crevasses and other openings known as terraces, causing sideways melt of 30 meters (98 feet) or more per year.
“Warm water is getting into the weakest parts of the glacier and making it worse,” Ms Schmidt told Reuters.
“That is the kind of thing we should all be very concerned about,” she said.
