Sudden Ice Loss in Antarctica is So Large it Impacts Earth's Gravity

Antarctica may be losing a bit more ice. Scientists have witnessed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable region of Antarctica.

To make this latest finding, the researchers used measurements of the elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet made by a suite of satellites. This revealed that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change up to 2009. After 2009, though, the scientists found that multiple glaciers along a vast coastal expanse suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean at nearly a constant rate of 60 cubic km, or about 55 trillion liters of water each year.

"To date, the glaciers added roughly 300 cubic km of water to the ocean," said Bert Wouters, one of the researchers, in a news release. "That's the equivalent of the volume of nearly 350,000 Empire State Buildings combined."

The researchers found that the ice loss in the region is so large that it causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which can be detected by another satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

"The fact that so many glaciers in such a large region suddenly started to lose ice came as a surprise to us," said Wouters. "It shows a very fast response of the ice sheet: in just a few years the dynamic regime completely shifted."

The sudden change cannot be explained by changes in snowfall or air temperature. Instead, the team attributes the rapid ice loss to warming oceans.

"It appears that sometime around 2009, the ice shelf thinning and the subsurface melting of the glaciers passed a critical threshold which triggered the sudden ice loss," said Wouters. "However, compared to other regions in Antarctica, the Southern Peninsula is rather understudied, exactly because it did not show any changes in the past, ironically."

The findings are published in the journal Science.

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