Researchers have discovered beneath the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is a huge cave. The cavity once contained 14 billion tons of ice, most of it has melted in the past three years. Such rapid melting processes could drive the sea level rise. the Tobias Kühn
At the edge of the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is created below the ice Shelf is a huge cave. The dimensions of the cave are enormous: your floor area is approximately half the size of the Chiemsee, which is about as high as the Eiffel tower and once contained 14 billion tons of ice. Much of it is melted off in the past three years, a report by researchers Pietro Milillo by Nasa and the California Institute of Technology in the magazine Science Advances.
In the work of European and American climate researchers, among others, also by the German Institute for air and space travel (DLR) and the European space Agency ESA were involved.
The previously unknown cave was discovered by measurements with eisdurchdringenden radar devices on Board of Research aircraft, and radar satellites. In the front area of the cave, the floating ice shelf is melting faster than at any other in the Antarctic to be measured, and thus faster than model calculations predicted. In the rear area, however, the ice thaws rather slowly.
the ice shelf is in the foothills of a glacier, which extends on the sea, but still with the ice on the Land but not the Land itself – is connected. By the rinsing with warm, salty water from the depth of this part of the glacier melts particularly quickly, with the result that ice masses from the interior settling. The ice is on the water, it’s also in the solid state the sea level to rise.
The ice thaws in the cave unexpectedly fast
In the spacious sections of the now-found cave of these acts under the flushing effect is particularly strong. In the rear, flatter part of the cave, however, this mechanism does not reach less, as the warm water from greater Depths to mix with the water from higher layers, according to the study. The discovery of this cave in which the ice thaws on such an unexpected way, and this is the real Surprise of the study. The mean melt rates that were measured on the Thwaites glacier, are also quite high, but are in the expected range.
The Thwaites glacier is a long glacier and climate researchers observed. He, along with the neighboring Pine Island glacier as a stopper for the ice masses of West Antarctica, says Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for climate impact research (PIK). The bottom of the Südkontinents falls to the country’s interior.
the two outer glacier-free would Give way, so that the masses of ice behind it were in the ocean, this would have a sea level rise of about three and a half meters. “If not a miracle happens, this will happen.” However, this process is not in the short term, but over a period of a hundred years ago, Levermann.
the surprising cave formation explain, further improvements in the simulation of the dynamics of glaciers and sea is necessary. “The impact of this glacier to predict sea level rise in the decades before, you have to understand how the sea melts him,” said the study involved researchers Eric Rignot of the University of California, according to a statement of Nasa. The Thwaites glacier alone currently contributes approximately four percent to the global sea-level rise.
