Research Press Release
Nature Communications
November 29, 2023
A paper reports that from 2018 to 2019, the Cadman Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula rapidly retreated due to ocean warming, and the ice movement speed, which had been stable for a long time, increased by about 94%.Nature CommunicationsPublished in These findings suggest that the glaciers located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula are rapidly retreating, highlighting that the effects of future climate change will be greatly felt on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Glacier retreat in Antarctica is known to destabilize the Antarctic ice sheet and lead to sea level rise. The collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf has focused researchers’ attention on glaciers in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula. Glaciers in the western Antarctic Peninsula (such as Cadman Glacier), on the other hand, have been under different atmospheric and oceanographic conditions and have been more stable than those in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula for more than half a century.
Benjamin Wallis and colleagues used satellite observation data and oceanographic measurements to examine the stability of Cadman Glacier from 1991 to 2022. They found that Cadman Glacier had been stable for more than 50 years, but then began to accelerate, causing the glacier’s ice shelf to collapse. In addition, ice loss was increasing by about 0.5 gigatons per year. Cadman Glacier’s carving front retreated 8 kilometers between November 2018 and December 2019, with stranded ice thinning at a rate of 20 meters per year during the same period. Wallis et al. attribute the retreat of the Cadman Glacier to the existence of a waterway located at a depth of 400 meters, suggesting that this channel allows abnormally warm seawater from the upper ocean layer to be pumped into the glacier. .
This finding indicates that thermal forcing from warm seawater rapidly creates a dynamic imbalance state in the Antarctic Peninsula’s glaciers, increasing the amount of ice runoff, and suggests that this region is more resilient to ocean warming. It highlights the vulnerability.
doi:10.1038/s41467-023-42970-4
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