Climate crisis in Antarctica: 28 billion tons of ice have disappeared

The ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica is now occurring at a rate that corresponds to the most extreme scenario of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A new study released this week shows that the earth lost 28 billion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017.

Activates the full ice alarm

This equates to a 100 meter thick ice sheet covering all of Britain.

– It’s going to get worse. We need to define a new goal on how bad this can get, says Thomas Slater, a researcher at the University of Leeds.

In collaboration with a team of researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Leeds and University College London, he presented a report this week showing that the speed of ice melting in the polar and mountainous areas of the world has increased significantly over the past 30 years.

He monitored the ice for 23 years.

The university research, published in The Cryosphere of the European Geosciences Union, is the first of its kind to use satellite data.

For 23 years, they have analyzed all the ice masses in the world and how they have changed. They have studied glaciers, drift ice, ice around the poles, and ice in Greenland.

– This confirms what has also reached our researchers. This clearly raises concerns, says Ole Arvid Misund, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

The rate of ice loss increased from 800 billion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year in 2017. About two-thirds of the ice reduction is due to global warming, while around one third is caused by the warming of the oceans. .

First in the world

According to the study’s lead author, Thomas Slater, this is the first study that, using satellite observations, examined all the world’s ice masses and demonstrated how they disappear.

– Ice is melting on every continent, but Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice at a faster rate than the rest. This will lead to a rise in sea level that will have very serious consequences for several coastal communities this century, Slater said at the press conference.

If the water level rises one meter by the year 2100, which is the level set by the IPCC as its “worst case scenario”, the consequences will be dramatic for hundreds of millions of people.

It can have unforeseen consequences

– This can have potentially catastrophic consequences for people living in coastal areas, says Thomas Slater.

The melting of the ice itself has not raised the sea level by more than 35 millimeters, but when large areas that reflect sunlight disappear, this indirectly contributes to a rise in sea level.

It hasn’t happened in 12,000 years.

Faster warming in the Arctic

“When sea ice contracts, the oceans and atmosphere absorb more solar energy, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet,” said Isobel Lawrence, one of the researchers behind the report.

“This not only accelerates the melting of sea ice, but also worsens the melting of glaciers and ice-covered surfaces, leading to a rise in sea levels,” says Isobel Lawrence.

Create big worries

– This confirms what our researchers have come up with. We see that we are in the “worst case”, and there is an increasing merger in the Arctic, Svalbard and Greenland. In 2020, there was a record collapse in Svalbard. This clearly raises concerns, says Ole Arvid Misund, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Still, there is one thing that scares him more than anything else.

– The most worrying thing is that the ice in Antarctica is starting to melt at a faster rate. This is where the really big ice masses are, and with a sea level rise of up to a meter in a high emissions scenario, it will have major consequences in the most populated countries like China, India and Bangladesh, Misund tells Dagbladet . .

In these countries, there are many large cities located by the sea, or in the lowlands, that will feel the consequences of rising water levels.

Many hundreds of millions of people affected

– These are highly populated areas and, in a high emissions scenario, many hundreds of millions of people will be affected.

– What consequences will this have for Norway?

– Some cities in Norway, like Bergen and Stavanger, will probably notice if the water level rises one meter, but at the same time we can probably handle this. As I said, it is the densely populated low-lying areas of the world that will pay the highest price, says Ole Arvid Misund, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute.

This is underscored by another study, published in 2019 in Climate Central, which concluded that up to 300 million people could be affected by devastating bodies of water by 2050, roughly three times more than previously estimated. The number could rise to 630 million by 2100.

Scientists sound the alarm

The study warned that major coastal cities such as Mumbai in India, Shanghai in China and Bangkok in Thailand could flood over the next 30 years.