The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming at twice the rate previously
thought, say scientists who have teased the information from more than
50 years of temperature data at Byrd Station, in the center of the ice.
The average temperature at that station has risen 4.3 degrees F (2.4
degrees C) since 1958, which is triple the warming rate of most of the
planet and on par with the very fastest warming parts of the world.
Of
particular concern is that the warming is partially taking place in the
summer months. That's when the already seasonal warmth, plus the new
higher average air temperatures, combine and increase the likelihood of
major melting events that destabilize the ice shelves. Those shelves
hold back a lot of Antarctic glacial ice from reaching the sea,
explained Ohio State University's David Bromwich, the lead author on the
study, which was published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.
“Lots
of melting can do lots of damage to the ice shelves,” Bromwich told
Discovery News. And that can ramp up Antarctica's contribution to sea
level rise worldwide. “We know that these melting events can happen
today and we are likely to see more melting events.”
Researchers
have already documented accelerating of glaciers along the Amundsen Sea
coast, which is dumping more West Antarctic ice into the sea, but
warmer sea temperatures had been seen as the primary cause of that. Air
temperatures have been harder to pin down, due to large gaps in the
records at Byrd Station.
“There are very, very few
observations for that part of the world,” said Davis Schneider an
Antarctic researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
and not a contributor to the new study. Thinning ice sheets, borehole
temperature readings and ice cores all provide indirect evidence of
warming, he said, but what's been needed is “ground-truthing” with old
fashioned thermometer data.
“It's those kind of data, that are fragmented, that this study has skillfully reconstructed,” said Schneider.
Two
previous studies using the fragmented Byrd Station air temperature data
had come to conflicting conclusions, which prompted Bromwich and his
colleagues to do the most detailed and careful analysis yet. That
included reconstructing data using climate models and temperature data
from other Antarctic sites.
“We did a very, very careful job of it,” said Bromwich.
The
new work is welcome, said Schneider, because getting a handle on what's
happening in Antarctic air temperatures has not been easy, but it's
essential.
“This is a very first-order question,” said
Schneider. “Hopefully we can move beyond that. There is a lot less
known about Antarctica than the Arctic and we have a lot of catching up
to do.”
