Researchers believe the collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet is preventable: Report

A group of international researchers believe the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) which is projected to lose mass due to climate change and global ocean warming and is likely to contribute to the rise in sea levels impacting coastal communities across the world is preventable.

The researchers are part of a project which is an international collaboration involving scientists, drillers, engineers and science communicators known as the “Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to Two Degrees of Warming” or SWAIS2C. 

‘We may have some time’

Researchers citing a recent ice sheet modelling wrote in The Conversation, that all is not lost since Ross and Ronne-Filchner – Earth’s largest ice shelves currently stabilise large regions of ice in the West Antarctic interior – are still intact. 

While there are ocean cavities beneath ice shelves that are already “warm”, there are also regions where ice shelf cavities are currently ‘cold’, the group of researchers and scientists wrote. 

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Therefore, based on existing data they believe that these large ice shelves and the WAIS will largely remain intact if we manage to keep warming close to or below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level.

The modelling experiments, according to the researchers, indicate that if the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, is not crossed it can limit the total contribution to sea level rise coming from the Antarctic ice sheet to somewhere between 0.12-0.44 metres by 2100. 

However, since global surface temperature is likely to exceed the 1.5-degree threshold, the melting of the ice sheet could raise global sea levels by as much as three metres. The WAIS is said to be Antarctica’s largest current contributor to global sea-level rise. 

They also noted that the collapse of the WAIS could have devastating consequences, including widespread flooding and displacement of coastal communities. 

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Addressing the knowledge gap

The SWAIS2C project, according to their website, aims to answer the key question ‘Does the Paris climate target save the Ross Ice Shelf and limit Antarctic Ice Sheet melt’? 

In a bid to look for the answer, their team will recover “key environmental information from the ice and sediment” at two different sites on the Ross Ice Shelf. 

So far, no one has drilled deep into the Antarctic seabed, particularly at a location so far from a major base and so close to the centre of the WAIS. 

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The team, according to the project’s website, will drill through thousands of feet of ice at two different sites – Kamb Ice Stream and Crary Ice Rise – to recover “sediment cores”.

The drilling would also allow them to collect and compare data on how the ice shelf behaves in different temperatures to understand how sensitive the Ross Ice Shelf and WAIS were to past warming similar to the 1.5 to two degrees Celsius set in the Paris Agreement.