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Frozen Peril: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet
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# : |
12822 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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4 / 1995 |
3,112 Words |
| Author
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Robert Bindschadler
Robert Bindschadler is a glaciologist with the Oceans and Ice
Branch of the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes at NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. |
Marine-based ice sheets are an endangered species. The West Antarctic ice sheet is the last of this dying breed, which rest on beds well below sea level. Ice sheets of this type have a history of not disappearing quietly but collapsing suddenly, forcing coastlines rapidly inland as their frozen mass is discharged into the oceans. The internal clock of the West Antarctic ice sheet may be rousing this frozen mass from a slumber of thousands of years, just as warmer atmospheric temperatures have begun to deliver a thicker cloak of snow.
Scientists have spent years scrutinizing this ice sheet's behavior while attempting to answer the puzzle of why the West Antarctic ice sheet remains when all of its relatives have long since perished. They now conclude that there is the possibility that, by its unique process of ice flow, the West Antarctic ice sheet could rapidly discharge vast amounts of ice into the ocean, raising sea level worldwide at rates far faster than have been experienced in at least the last 4,000 years.
The climate pendulum
Beach visitors expect to find the ocean's edge at the same place each year, give or take a few sandy steps. Climatologists, however, adopt a longer time perspective spanning generations of generations. They also recognize that the level of the world's seas fluctuates over a vertical range of hundreds of feet. Ice sheets and their smaller glacier relatives serve as huge freshwater reservoirs that control the amount of water in the ocean and the positions of saltwater coastlines throughout the world.
Layers of past ocean-living
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