Scientists make troubling discovery after examining overlooked phenomenon within Antarctica’s ice shelves: ‘I was surprised’
As extreme weather and high temperatures spurred on by humankind’s industrial presence continue to impact our planet, we must rely on research and data collection to stay informed.
So, it’s especially concerning that researchers have discovered a major oversight in Antarctic ice shelf climate models, as Phys.org reported.
What’s happening?
The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, leveraged artificial intelligence to scan the ice shelves in order to gauge the impact of slush on the fragile frozen expanse.
Slush is difficult to detect from satellite imagery, and it leads to the generation of 2.8 times more meltwater, since the watery formation absorbs more heat than ice or snow. As the report points out, this “could have profound implications for ice shelf stability and sea level rise.”
Each summer, water pools on the floating Antarctic ice shelves, and that contributes to fracturing and collapse. The impact of slush on this is more difficult to determine, which means our climate models need adjustment.
“We can use satellite imagery to map meltwater lakes across much of Antarctica, but it’s hard to map slush, because it looks like other things, such as shadows from clouds, when viewed from a satellite,” Rebecca Dell from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute explained in the report.
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The team used historical data collected from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite and trained a machine learning model to look for slush and meltwater over 57 Antarctic ice shelves between 2013 and 2021.
This led it to understand that only 43% of the meltwater on ice shelves was in the form of pools and lakes, while the remaining 57% was contained in slushy areas that can boost the melt rate.
Why are these results so important?
Global temperatures increased by 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) between 1970 and 2020, according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, mostly because of increased levels of planet-warming gases released into the atmosphere.
Ocean temperatures have spiked as a result, melting ice shelves and impacting wildlife in the region. Several penguin colonies in the Antarctic Peninsula completely vanished between 1980 and 2020.
What can be done about this situation?
Slowly rising sea levels can have a devastating impact on coastal areas around the world, but we can work together to help reduce our impact by reducing the use of dirty fuels and switching to sustainable energy sources.
We’ll continue to rely on scientific research for guidance, but that process is ongoing, and models will be adjusted with each new discovery.
“I was surprised that this meltwater was so poorly accounted for in climate models,” Dell shared in the report. “Our job as scientists is to reduce uncertainty, so we always want to improve our models so they are as accurate as possible.”
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