Is it too late to prevent the meltdown of West Antarctica?

No, but time is running out to prevent that from happening.

I don't think that many U.S.citizens are aware of what scientists expect for
sea level rise long term, beyond the year 2100, or what kind of damage could
be done during the current century. Both prospects are quite bad under likely
carbon emission scenarios. The study below concluded that limiting the global
mean temperature (GMT) rise above mid-19th century levels to 2.0 degrees C
will result in nearly 30 feet of sea level rise. The time frame for that sea level rise is a few thousand years so there would be time for humanity to adapt and abandon all coastal cities. If sea levels rise 30 feet that implies that West Antarctica will likely
completely melt down. If the GMT could be limited to 1.5 degrees C. that would
probably not cause a meltdown of West Antarctica. That is one reason why there has been so much emphasis on preventing the GMT to rise above 1.5 degrees C.
instead of 2.0 degrees C., which was the original goal of the Paris Accord. I don't
believe that we will make the 1.5 degree C. target; maybe we will make the 2.0
degree C. target.

I have copied portions of the article below.

Reducing carbon emissions will limit sea level rise -- ScienceDaily

A new study demonstrates that a correlation also exists between cumulative carbon emissions and future sea level rise over time -- and the news isn't good.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios outlined in the Paris Agreement -- keeping the overall warming of Earth to 1.5 degrees (Celsius) -- sea levels will continue to rise by several meters over the next few thousand years. If humans continue to burn fossil fuels so that temperatures meet the 2-degree (Celsius) threshold outlined in the Paris Agreement, global mean sea level rise may exceed nine meters, or nearly 30 feet.

Results of the study have been published today in Nature Climate Change.

"When we pump more carbon into the atmosphere, the effect on temperature is almost immediate," said Peter Clark, an Oregon State University climate scientist and lead author on the study. "But sea level rise takes a lot longer to respond to that warming. If you take an ice cube out of the freezer and put it on the sidewalk, it doesn't melt immediately.

"The sea level rise we've seen thus far is just the tip of a very large iceberg," said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. "The big question is whether we can stabilize the system and find new energy sources. If not, we're on the way to a slow-motion catastrophe. The question becomes: What do we owe our grandchildren, and their grandchildren?"

"You can build a one-meter seawall," Clark said. "But what do you do when sea levels rise by two, or five, or 10 meters? Rising sea levels haven't really alarmed people yet because their response time is much longer than temperature. Smart countries will use that to their advantage and begin adaptation strategies over time."


Another article from Forbes.com describes what could happen during the present century
including as early as the year 2050. I copied 1 paragraph from that article.

Shocking New Maps Show How Sea Level Rise Will Destroy Coastal Cities By 2050
(forbes.com)

By 2050, sea-level rise will push average annual coastal floods higher than land now home to 300 million people, according to a study published in Nature Communications. High tides could permanently rise above land occupied by over 150 million people, including 30 million in China. Without advanced coastal defense and planning, populations in these areas may face permanent flooding within 30 years.

 

This is the conclusion from a different study (Annual Review of Environment and Resources) on long-term sea level rise. It was published in August of 2018.


" Over two millennia, they project a commitment of 1.4–5.2 m from 1°C of warming, 3.0–7.7 m from 2°C of warming, and 6.0–12.1 m from 4°C of warming."
1 meter = 3.28 feet. With 2.0 degrees C. of warming this study projects 9.8 to 25.2 feet of sea level rise after 2000 years. The sea level would continue to
rise after 2000 years.

Mapping Sea-Level Change in Time, Space, and Probability | Annual Review of Environment and Resources (annualreviews.org)

4.4.5. Multi-millennial projections.

"The effects of climate change on sea level are not felt instantaneously; rather, due to the slow response time of deep ocean heat uptake and the sluggish response of ice sheets, they play out over millennia. The long-term sea-level response to a given emission future is sometimes called a “sea-level commitment” (168). Levermann et al. (168) use a combination of physical models for ocean warming, glaciers, ice caps, and ice-sheet contributions to assess the sea-level change arising from two millennia of exposure to a constant temperature. Over 2,000 years, they find a sea-level commitment of approximately 2.3 m/°C of warming. They note, however, that over longer time periods Greenland exhibits an abrupt threshold of ice loss between 0.8 and 2.2°C that ultimately adds approximately 6 m to GMSL. Incorporating this abrupt threshold yields a relationship, they conclude, that is consistent with paleo–sea-level constraints from the LIG, the MPWP, and Marine Isotope Stage 11 (approximately 411–401 thousand years ago). Over two millennia, they project a commitment of 1.4–5.2 m from 1°C of warming, 3.0–7.7 m from 2°C of warming, and 6.0–12.1 m from 4°C of warming. Over ten millennia, these numbers increase to 1.5–10.9 m, 3.5–13.5 m, and 12.0–16.0 m. Clark et al. (169) use physical models to consider not only the translation between temperature and long-term sea-level change, but also the translation between emissions and temperature."
"They estimate that historical CO2 emissions have already locked in 1.2–2.2 m of sea-level rise, and phasing emissions down to zero over the course of the next ∼90 years will lock in another ∼9 m."

Seas May Rise 2.3 Meters per Degree C of Global Warming: Report - Scientific American

 

West Antarctica ice loss seems largely driven by geothermal heat, for which there is no fix. But the good news is that Antarctic ice is otherwise largely robust.


More Evidence Antarctica Has Been Cooling, Regional Sea Ice Increasing For Over 40 Years
By Kenneth Richard on 27. September 2021

A new study (Kumar et al., 2021) reports the “overall SST trend in the Weddell Sea is negative” since 1979 and this has occurred in tandem with “the expansion of SIE [sea ice extent].” Another new study (King et al., 2021) reports the oldest temperature stations in Antarctica show a cooling/non-warming trend since 1956. Antarctica […]

Posted in Antarctic, Cooling/Temperature, Sea Ice | 6 Responses


The Most Inconvenient Region On The Planet For Global Warming Alarmists: Antarctica Sees Growing Sea Ice
By P Gosselin on 28. August 2021

By Kirye and Pierre Just a short post today about sea ice trends at Antarctica, a place that global warming alarmists don’t like talki9ng about For some reason, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) doesn’t add a trend line to the annual minimum and mean sea ice extent plot for Antarctica. So we’ve added these trend […]

Posted in Antarctic | 13 Responses


New Study: Antarctica Added 0.76 cm To Sea Levels Since 1992…Ice Extent Has Been Advancing Since 2009
By Kenneth Richard on 9. August 2021

Current climate alarmist fervor can be wholly undermined by the magnitude of change for the Antarctic ice sheet in recent decades. It’s IPCC AR6 Day (10 August, 2021) – a day devoted to celebratory alarmism. Here’s the larger perspective. The most concerning aspect of global warming is often identified as the threat of rising sea […]

Posted in Antarctic, Cooling/Temperature, Glaciers | 3 Responses

Comprehensive Data, Recent Studies In Top Journals: Antarctica Stable, Temps Falling, Ice Mass Growing!
By P Gosselin on 14. January 2020

News from Antarctica: how’s the ice? By Kalte Sonne (German text translated/edited by P. Gosselin) The ice in Antarctica, how is it doing? Is it melting, is it growing? In the following we wishto present the latest literature on the subject. There is a lot to report. Fasten your seat belt, there’s a lot to […]

 

As for sea level rise, not a pressing problem.


We’re Not Gonna Drown! Analyses Show COASTAL SEA LEVEL RISE Is Only 1.69 mm Per Year!
By P Gosselin on 23. March 2021

UPDATE: Sea level rise near the coasts where people actually live is found to be 1.69 mm/yr. But when crunching the data for the entire ocean, as Willis Eschenbach has shown, a figure of just 1.52 mm/year is computed. Hot shot data analyst Zoe Phin at her site examines sea level rise. There she notes, […]

Posted in Sea Levels | 16 Responses


Sea level Rise Review. Rate Of Rise Depends On Who You Ask. Most Say: “No Alarm”
By P Gosselin on 21. February 2021

In the latest video, German climate science site Die kalte Sonne here presents a review of sea level rise. No one disagrees that sea level is rising. But there’s plenty of disagreement on how fast it’s really rising. Tide gauges According to the direct tide gauge measurements, sea level rise has been modest and the […]

Posted in Sea Levels | 12 Responses


New Study: Sea Level Rise Rates The Same Since 1958 As They Were For All Of 1900-2018
By Kenneth Richard on 11. January 2021

A new analysis of global sea level rise rates concludes the rising trend was 1.56 mm/yr−¹ from 1900-2018. This is the same rate as for 1958-2014 (1.5 mm/yr−¹), indicating there has not been a long-term distinctive change in sea level rise rates in the last 120 years. In 2018, Frederikse et al. assessed the contributing […]

 

Research published in 2018 and 2019 has been superseded by research published in 2021.

 

RealClimate: The Antarctic ice sheet is melting and, yeah, it’s probably our fault. August of 2019

Glaciers in West Antarctica have thinned and accelerated in the last few decades. A new paper provides some of the first evidence that this is due to human activities.

by Eric Steig

It’s been some time since I wrote anything for RealClimate. In the interim there’s been a lot of important new work in the area of my primary research interest – Antarctica. Much of it is aimed at addressing the central question in Antarctic glaciology: How much ice is going to be lost from the West Antarctic ice sheet, and how soon? There’s been a nearly continuous stream of evidence supporting the view that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is in serious trouble – perhaps already undergoing the beginning of “collapse”, which John Mercer presaged more than four decades ago.

Yet showing that the ice sheet has changed doesn’t really address the question about what will happen in the future. To do that, we also need to answer another one: How much of the ice loss that has already happened is a response to anthropogenic climate change? A new paper in Nature Geoscience this week is one of the first to attempt an answer, and that is what has inspired me to get back to RealClimate blogging. Full disclosure: I’m a co-author on the paper.

In this post, I’d like to provide a bit of context for our new paper, and to emphasize some points about our findings that are generally going to be lost in popular accounts of our work.

The key finding is that we now have evidence that the increasing loss of ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a result of human activities — rising greenhouse gas concentrations in particular. Now, some may be surprised to learn that this wasn’t already known. But the argument that humans are responsible has rested largely on the grounds that there must be a connection. After all, why should melting have increased only in the late 20th century, precisely when the impacts of anthropogenic climate change were becoming more and more apparent? It seems an unlikely coincidence.

In short, glacier melt in West Antarctica has increased because more Circumpolar Deep Water (which is relatively warm) is getting from the ocean surrounding Antarctica onto the Antarctic continental shelf and reaching the floating ice shelves of the large outlet glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet into the ocean. As shown by Thoma et al. (200 in a seminal modeling study in Geophysical Research Letters**, how much Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) gets onto the continental shelf is strongly influenced by the strength and direction of the winds at the shelf edge. Essentially, stronger westerlies (or simply weaker easterlies) tend to cause more CDW inflow, and hence, more glacial melt.

The article goes on to link strong westerly winds with sea surface temperature trends in the tropics. Humans are the cause of sea surface trends in the tropics.

This subject is also summarized here: Scientists Link Climate Change to Melting in West Antarctica | Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (columbia.edu)

“We knew this region was affected by natural climate cycles lasting about a decade, but these didn’t necessarily explain the ice loss,” said study coauthor Pierre Dutrieux of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Now we have evidence that a century-long change underlies these cycles, and that it is caused by human activities.”

Lead author Paul Holland, of the British Antarctic Survey, said, “The impact of human-induced climate change on the Antarctic Ice Sheet is not simple. This is the first evidence for a direct link between human activities and the loss of ice from West Antarctica. The results imply that a combination of human activity and natural climate changes have caused the sea-level rise resulting from ice loss in this region.”

The team also looked at model simulations of future winds. Holland said that if high greenhouse-gas emissions continue in the future, the simulated winds will probably keep changing, and there could be a further increase in ice melting. However, if emissions of greenhouse gases are curtailed, there would probably be little change in the winds from present-day conditions. “This shows that curbing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce the future sea-level contribution from this region,” he said.

Coauthor Eric Steig of the University of Washington said the results “solve a long-standing puzzle. We have known for some time that varying winds near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have contributed to the ice loss, but it has not been clear why the ice sheet is changing now.”

Geothermal heat is warming Western Antarctica more than Eastern Antarctica but that heat is not causing the acceleration of ice loss from Western Antarctica.

 

Once again, newer research (2021) supersedes the old story.

Until Recently Scientists Believed Climate Change Has Been Melting Antarctic Glaciers. Now They Do Not.

By Kenneth Richard on 6. September 2021

According to a new study, 36% of 1979-2017 Antarctic ice loss was from the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. Scientists believed this glacier melt was due to anthropogenic climate change “until recently”. Now they say the glacier mass losses are due to the thin underlying crust and anomalously high geothermal heat in this region. We’ve […]

 

I for one am looking forward to a habitable Antartica (here's hoping it happens sooner than predicted...).

Antarctica Will Become Habitable In The Next Two Centuries Due To Climate Change (forbes.com)

How come 'climate change' is such a terrible thing? Areas that are frozen now becoming greener just means things grow better there. We can move to those areas and live there instead and farm and mine them. It seems to me having less of our most valuable resource, water, locked up in ice caps is a GOOD thing. The entire Earth has been 'ice free' many times over its billions of years and life yet thrives.

 

Except that it's cooling. Again, newer research (2021) supersedes older (2016) research.
New Study: A ‘Profound’ ~1°C Cooling Trend Across East Antarctica Since 1979 Is ‘Likely To Accelerate’
By Kenneth Richard on 12. July 2021

Share this...
Except for a few pockets of warming along the West Antarctic coast, surface air temperatures have cooled profoundly across East Antarctica – most of the continent, as well as the surrounding Southern Ocean – in the last 40 years (1979-201. About 30% of the cooling can be explained by Madden-Julian Oscillation forcing. . . .

 

So, what you're saying is, I need to burn more stuff?

 

To each his own.

 

At one time Antarctica was so warm that dinosaurs ruled there. Who was to blame for that, certainly not us humans.

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/collections/geological-collections/fossils-from-the-antarctic/

 

Start with shifting tectonic plates.

 

Because if it's hot enough to move to Antartica, a much larger area of the planet now inhabited, will be too hot to live in. There's no gain, only loss.

 

Are you saying there has always been a thick ice sheet at the south pole and Antarctica just kind of slid under it?

 

But other places that are now too cold to live in will also become warmer. Greenland, Northern Canada, Northern Siberia, these places are all vast and largely uninhabited because of the cold conditions. On what are you basing that it would be a net loss?

The world is 'smaller' today than it ever has been in the context of travel and relocation. Adaptation to climate change is simply a matter of resettling. And if the climate scientists are to be believed (which we're assuming by simply having this dicussion), then we can fairly reliably predict where we can start planning resettlements now.

 

Studies do not support blog’s claim that volcanic activity is causing melting of West Antarctic glaciers – Climate Feedback January, 20, 2020

SOURCE: James Edward Kamis, Robert W. Felix, IceAgeNow.info, PlateClimatology.com, 9 Jan. 2020

DETAILS
Misrepresents source: The three studies cited to support this claim do not draw this conclusion, nor do their results support it.
Fails to grasp significance of observation: The estimated geothermal heat flow occurring beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is not enough to cause the modern ice loss trend. Instead, geothermal heat merely helps explain why and how changes in climate and ocean circulation are causing the ice sheet to melt.

REVIEW
CLAIM: Volcanoes Melting West Antarctic Glaciers, Not Global Warming[...] Three new research studies confirm that geothermal heat flow, not man-made global warming, is the dominant cause of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) melting.


This claim was included in a January 2020 article posted by IceAgeNow.info. It primarily quotes a June 2018 article by James Kamis, published on PlateClimatology.com, which makes the same claim. Similar to another article by Kamis recently evaluated by Climate Feedback, this one misrepresents the findings of three studies by stating that glacial ice is melting due to geothermal heat flow beneath the ice rather than climate change.

The first study1 examines evidence for volcanic heat flow beneath a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet known as Pine Island Glacier, which is located near the Amundsen Sea. The study does not claim that this volcanic heat flow is the cause of modern ice loss measured there. It explains that “the existence of subglacial volcanism impacts both the stable and unstable dynamics of an ice sheet such as the [West Antarctic Ice Sheet]”. Subglacial volcanism can cause the base of a glacier to thaw, which causes them to behave differently than when they are frozen to the ground and can make them more vulnerable to rapid retreat. In addition, the presence of moving meltwater at the base further enables the glacier to slide along the ground.

The study describes how volcanic heat flow can be used to accurately model the future behavior of the Pine Island Glacier. It says, “The magnitude and the variations in the rate of volcanic heat supplied to the Pine Island Glacier, either by internal magma migration, or by an increase in volcanism as a consequence of ice sheet thinning, may impact the future dynamics of the Pine Island Glacier, during the contemporary period

Fire and Ice: Why Volcanic Activity Is Not Melting the Polar Ice Sheets – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

The team found the helium originated in Earth’s mantle, pointing to a volcanic heat source that may be triggering melting beneath the glacier and feeding the water network beneath it. However, the researchers concluded that the volcanic heat is not a significant contributor to the glacial melt observed in the ocean in front of Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf. Rather, they attributed the bulk of the melting to the warm temperature of the deep-water mass Pine Island Glacier flows into, which is melting the glacier from underneath.

Seroussi notes the changes happening now, especially in West Antarctica, are along the coast, which suggests the changes taking place in the ice sheet have nothing to do with volcanism, but are instead originating in the ocean. Ice streams reaching inland begin to flow and accelerate as ice along the coast disappears.

In addition, Seroussi says the tectonic plate that Antarctica rests upon is one of the most immobile on Earth. It’s surrounded by activity, but that activity also tends to keep it locked in position. There’s no reason to believe it would change today to impact the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet.

So, in conclusion, while Antarctica’s known volcanism does cause melting, Ivins and Seroussi agree there’s no connection between the loss of ice mass observed in Antarctica in recent decades and volcanic activity. The Antarctic ice sheet is at least 30 million years old, and volcanism there has been going on for millions of years. It's having no new effect on the current melting of the ice sheet.

 

No. The continent acquired the ice after moving south.

 

You are still running behind. The research in the link at #7 is from 2021.

 

I don't regard "The No Tricks Zone" as an accurate blog for climate science. It has a history of misrepresenting science. Geothermal energy
is not causing the acceleration of West Antarctica's ice.

 

The Thwaites Glacier ice shelf is likely to break away from the Thwaites Glacier within 5 years and, then break apart within 20 years
It is melting both from above and below. Massive fractures have formed across the ice shelf surface.
After this occurs, the Thwaites glacier, which holds enough ice to raise sea levels by 2 feet, will be vulnerable to slow disintegration.
That may take around 200 years are longer, but it could happen in less time. Once Thwaites disintegrates then other glaciers in West Antarctica will be exposed to warm ocean waters and they will disintegrate. Much of West Antarctica is below sea level with the deepest point at 1.7 miles below sea
level. When Thwaites begins to allow a large flow of ocean water in that will hasten its demise.

Scientists find record warm water in Antarctica, pointing to cause behind troubling glacier melt (phys.org) January 29, 2020.

A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica—an alarming discovery that points to the cause behind the gradual melting of this ice shelf while also raising concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.

"Warm waters in this part of the world, as remote as they may seem, should serve as a warning to all of us about the potential dire changes to the planet brought about by climate change," explains David Holland, director of New York University's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Global Sea Level Change, which conducted the research. "If these waters are causing glacier melt in Antarctica, resulting changes in sea level would be felt in more inhabited parts of the world."

The recorded warm waters—more than two degrees above freezing—flow beneath the Thwaites Glacier, which is part of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. The discovery was made at the glacier's grounding zone—the place at which the ice transitions between resting fully on bedrock and floating on the ocean as an ice shelf and which is key to the overall rate of retreat of a glacier.

Thwaites' demise alone could have significant impact globally.

The threat from Thwaites: The retreat of Antarctica's riskiest glacier (phys.org)

Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier is retreating rapidly as a warming ocean slowly erases its ice from below, leading to a faster flow, more fracturing and a threat of collapse, according to an international team of scientists. The glacier currently contributes four percent of annual global sea level rise. If it does collapse, global sea levels would rise by several feet—putting millions of people living in coastal locations in danger from extreme flooding.

Dr. Peter Davis, Physical Oceanographer at British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says: "Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is a river of ice the size of Great Britain that has been changing dramatically over the past 30 years. The speed at which it flows into the ocean has doubled, and there are fears that a complete collapse of the glacier could raise sea levels by over 60cm. Critically, the glacier is currently held back by an ice shelf, a floating extension of the glacier that is held in place by an underwater mountain.

As Thwaites retreats upstream and into the ice sheet, it may form very tall ice cliffs at the ocean front. Anna Crawford, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St. Andrews, and her team use computer modeling to study ice cliff failure: a process by which ice can break off the ends of the glacier into the open ocean. The process can take on many forms, but all of them could lead to very rapid retreat of the massive glacier. The bedrock shape of West Antarctica makes the region vulnerable to rapid retreat via ice-cliff failure, as increasingly tall cliffs could be exposed as the ice retreats. This could lead to a chain-reaction of fracturing, resulting in collapse, said Crawford. A challenge for the team is assessing if, when, and how fast this might occur, but major ice loss is possible within several decades to a few centuries.

 

You should base your conclusion on the peer-reviewed research that is quoted extensively and linked. Otherwise you're just spouting denial rooted in willful ignorance.

 

Do you understand that your own post makes my point?


". . . A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica—an alarming discovery that points to the cause behind the gradual melting of this ice shelf while also raising concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.

"Warm waters in this part of the world, as remote as they may seem, should serve as a warning to all of us about the potential dire changes to the planet brought about by climate change," explains David Holland, director of New York University's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Global Sea Level Change, which conducted the research. "If these waters are causing glacier melt in Antarctica, resulting changes in sea level would be felt in more inhabited parts of the world."

The recorded warm waters—more than two degrees above freezing—flow beneath the Thwaites Glacier, which is part of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. The discovery was made at the glacier's grounding zone—the place at which the ice transitions between resting fully on bedrock and floating on the ocean as an ice shelf and which is key to the overall rate of retreat of a glacier. . . . "

 

If we were to to be in full compliance with Paris today, right, now, this very second, we would still blow past 2 degrees

 

Paris was always a meaningless charade, but we're unlikely to go past 2 degrees regardless.