West Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the verge of COLLAPSING - sparking 13 feet of irreversible global sea level rise, scientists warn
Now, scientists warn that the vast natural feature is on the brink of a disastrous 'irreversible' collapse.
The collapse would cause a devastating sea-level rise globally over the next few hundred years of 13 feet (4 metres), the experts say.
And it could be triggered with ocean warming only slightly above the rate that we're seeing in the present day.
'As little as 0.25°C deep ocean warming above present-day can trigger the start of a collapse,' said study author David Chandler at Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE).
'With our present-day climate, the transition to the collapsed state will be slow, maybe 1,000 years, but it will likely be much faster if there is additional global warming.'
In a future scenario of sea level rises, cities and towns are flooded more easily, meaning people would have to flee their homes and move further inland.
Other small island nations might be gradually plunged underwater entirely, forcing inhabitants to emigrate.
Ice sheets are masses of glacial ice extending more than 19,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers).
There are two ice sheets on Earth – the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet – and together they contain about 99 per cent of the freshwater on Earth.
As the name suggests, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the western segment of the latter – and is more strongly affected by climate change.
And unlike its eastern counterpart, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet largely rests on the sea bed.
In other words, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is sitting in water – and today this water is getting warmer and warmer due to global warming.
'Both East and West Antarctica have really thick ice – well over 3km (2 miles), even 4.9km (3 miles) at its thickest,' Chandler told MailOnline.
'West Antarctica is important for two reasons; first, if even a small fraction of all that ice melts it will cause devastating sea-level rise.
'Second, the ice sheet itself influences climate, so if you melt some of it, that could cause climate changes even as far away as Europe.'
What is an ice sheet?
An ice sheet is a a layer of ice covering an extensive tract of land - more than 20,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers).
The two ice sheets on Earth today cover most of Greenland and Antarctica.
During the last ice age, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Scandinavia.
Together, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain more than 99 per cent of the freshwater ice on Earth.
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center
The research team – also including experts from academic institutions in the UK and Germany – ran model simulations through the glacial cycles over the last 800,000 years.
During this period, the Earth's climate has switched several times between cold periods known as 'glacials' and warmer periods called 'interglacials'.
Some of these past interglacials were likely warmer than our present-day climate and give a picture of how the vast Antarctic Ice Sheet could respond to future warming.
During interglacials, warm ocean water would have melted and thinned out the floating ice shelves that surround and protect West Antarctic Ice Sheet, leaving it vulnerable.
'In the past 800,000 years, the Antarctic Ice Sheet has had two stable states that it has repeatedly tipped between,' said Chandler.
'One, with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in place, is the state we are currently in. The other state is where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has collapsed.'
Because the heat needed to melt ice in Antarctica is supplied mostly by the ocean, the concern now is that warming waters from climate change will tip the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the collapsed state again.
Ice loss from this 'vast freshwater reservoir' could threaten coastal communities and the global economy if the ice volume decreases by just a few per cent.
Once the ice sheet has tipped to the collapsed state, reversal back to the stable present-day state would need several thousands of years of relatively cool temperatures (at or below pre-industrial conditions).
'Once tipping has been triggered it is self-sustaining and seems very unlikely to be stopped before contributing to about four meters of sea-level rise – and this would be practically irreversible,' Chandler said.
In 2023, experts at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to increase its rate of melting over the rest of the century, no matter how much we reduce fossil fuel use.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions are controlled to achieve the best possible scenario, melting of the ice sheet will continue to accelerate this century, at a speed three times faster than during the 20th century, the BAS team found.
If it melts completely, the ice sheet will release enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 17ft (5.3 metres).
However, scientists say that it is 'only' likely to make them rise by 3.2ft (one metre) by the end of the century.
Antarctica's ice sheets contain 70% of world's fresh water - and sea levels would rise by 180ft if it melts
Antarctica holds a huge amount of water.
The three ice sheets that cover the continent contain around 70 per cent of our planet's fresh water - and these are all to warming air and oceans.
If all the ice sheets were to melt due to global warming, Antarctica would raise global sea levels by at least 183ft (56m).
Given their size, even small losses in the ice sheets could have global consequences.
In addition to rising sea levels, meltwater would slow down the world's ocean circulation, while changing wind belts may affect the climate in the southern hemisphere.
In February 2018, Nasa revealed El Niño events cause the Antarctic ice shelf to melt by up to ten inches (25 centimetres) every year.
El Niño and La Niña are separate events that alter the water temperature of the Pacific ocean.
The ocean periodically oscillates between warmer than average during El Niños and cooler than average during La Niñas.
Using Nasa satellite imaging, researchers found that the oceanic phenomena cause Antarctic ice shelves to melt while also increasing snowfall.
In March 2018, it was revealed that more of a giant France-sized glacier in Antarctica is floating on the ocean than previously thought.
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The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Science could enable a fascist future. Especially if we don't learn from the past
Science is in crisis. Funding infrastructures for both basic and applied research are being systematically decimated, while in places of great power, science's influence on decision making is waning. Long-term and far-reaching studies are being shuttered, and thousands of scientists' livelihoods are uncertain, to say nothing of the incalculable casualties resulting from the abrupt removal of life-saving medical and environmental interventions. Understandably, the scientific community is working hard to weather this storm and restore funding to whatever extent possible. In times like these, it may be tempting to settle for the status quo of six months ago, wanting everything simply to go back to what it was (no doubt an improvement for science, compared to the present). But equally, such moments of crisis offer an opportunity to rebuild differently. As Arundhati Roy wrote about Covid-19 in April 2020, 'Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.' What could science look like, and what good could science bring, if we moved through the portal of the present moment into a different world? At worst, science will play its part in accelerating us toward a tech-obsessed end-times-fascist future. At best, science will broaden its power as a positive force, serving the wellbeing of humans and nature alike. Imagining this latter vision in exquisite detail is essential, and we argue here that to first envision and then work towards the best version of science, we need to reckon honestly with science's past and present. Most crucially, we need to confront the commonplace claim that science is – or ought to be – objective and apolitical, uninfluenced by human culture, norms, or values. The current moment has rudely awakened many scientists to the fact that research is indeed political, and further makes clear that scientists' attempts to distance themselves from politics will backfire. Denying the inherent entanglements of science and politics leaves scientists lacking the capacity and tools to mount effective defenses against bad-faith political attacks. This denial also allows science to go unquestioned when it undermines the needs and rights of marginalized beings and places. As much as scientists might wish for science to be cleanly separable from politics, decades of research demonstrates that this has never been true, and never could be. The field of science studies examines the inherently human processes of science – who defines what science is, who gets to conduct scientific research, who pays for it, who benefits from it, who is harmed by it – and how these human dynamics shape scientific knowledge. Feminist science studies in particular documents how power and oppression shape scientific findings and applications, demonstrating that even 'science at its most basic' is in fact inextricable from politics. Some of the most compelling, and consequential, examples of such entanglement can be found in human and animal biology. Consider an analysis of 19th-century science on human race and sex from Sally Markowitz, which clearly reveals the influence of white supremacism on basic biology. Markowitz shows how 19th-century scientists not only asserted that human races are biological categories, but also that the so-called white race is evolutionarily superior. To 'prove' this politically-motivated claim, these scientists first decided that the degree of distinction between men's and women's bodies (or 'sexual dimorphism') was proof of evolutionary superiority, and then claimed, on the basis of selective measurements, that sexual dimorphism is supposedly greater in Europeans than in Africans. Women of African descent were thus mismeasured as both less female and less human than their white counterparts – rendering all people of African descent more 'animal-like'. This 19th-century research has had far-reaching consequences, from justifying enslavement, to supporting eugenic sterilization practices well into the 20th century, to contemporary controversy around the 'femaleness' of elite Black and brown female athletes, among other examples. It may be tempting to relegate such blatant instances to the past, and claim that scientists have since corrected such mistakes. But in fact these ghosts continue to haunt us. In our new book, Feminism in the Wild, we – an evolutionary biologist and a science studies scholar – dive deep into how contemporary scientists describe and understand animal behavior, and find the dominant political perspectives of the last 200 years reflected back to us. Scientific research on mating behavior in species ranging from fruit flies to primates is entangled with patriarchal expectations of masculinity and femininity. Scientists' understanding of animals' foraging behavior mirrors a capitalist theory of economics, based upon assumptions of scarcity and optimization, and expectations of individualism are pervasive throughout scientific research on how animals behave in groups. Contemporary researchers express surprise, for instance, at elephants who alter their eating habits to accommodate a fellow herd member disabled by poachers, at ravens who alert one another to the presence of food in the dead of winter, or at female dolphins who begin lactating without having given birth in order to nurse calves whose mothers have died. Dominant evolutionary theories do not explain such instances of care on their own terms, but instead insist that these behaviors must ultimately be self-interested. Not coincidentally, these theories rooted in individualism only rose to dominance in the last 50 years or so, alongside the rise of neoliberalism. Meanwhile, eugenic perspectives, rooted in racism, classism, and ableism, constrain how scientists understand sex, intelligence, performance and more, in humans and animals alike. For example, today's scientists are still somewhat shocked by lizards who successfully navigate tree trunks and branches with missing limbs, as these agile lizards undermine the presumed correlation between an animal's appearance, performance, and survival that's captured in the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Other scientists continue to argue that peahens (for instance) choose to mate with the most beautiful peacock, despite his expansive tail's costly impediments, because beauty is a 'favorable' trait even if it doesn't promote survival. Such arguments about female mate choice are rooted in a theory developed decades ago by mathematician and evolutionary biologist Ronald A Fisher, a vocal advocate of 'positive eugenics', which means encouraging only people with 'favorable' traits to reproduce. Leonard Darwin (son of Charles Darwin), in his 1923 presidential address to the Eugenics Education Society, made this connection between Fisher's theories and eugenics explicit, stating: 'Wonderful results have been produced…by the action of sexual selection in all kinds of organisms…and if this be so, ought we not to enquire whether this same agency cannot be utilized in our efforts to improve the human race?' Leonard Darwin then went on to deliver an astoundingly modern-sounding description of sexual selection before considering its implications for effective eugenics propaganda. We offer these examples (and many more, in our book), to show that scientific research on the evolution of animal behavior remains thoroughly and undeniably political. But the moral of our story is not that scientists must root out all politics and strive for pure neutrality. Rather, feminist science studies illustrates how science has always been shaped by politics, and always will be. It is therefore incumbent upon scientists to confront this reality rather than deny it. Thankfully, for as long as science has been aligned with systems of oppression, there have been scientists and other scholars resisting this alignment, both explicitly and implicitly. In Feminism in the Wild, we detail the work of scientists developing new mathematical models about female mating behavior that discard old assumptions aligned with patriarchy and eugenics, instead demonstrating that it's possible and even likely that female animals are not necessarily concerned with mating with the 'best' males and that mate choice can be a more flexible and variable affair. We discuss a rich history of theories about animals' behavior in groups that take both individual and collective well-being seriously. And we explore alternatives rooted in queer, Indigenous, and Marxist standpoints, which counter the dominant view that animal behavior is all about maximizing survival and reproduction. Ultimately, we show that it is possible—and even desirable—to fold political analysis into scientific inquiry in a way that makes science more multifaceted and more honest, bringing us closer to the truth than a science which denies its politics ever could. In this historical moment scientists must embrace, rather than avoid, the political underpinnings and implications of scientific inquiry. As Science's editor-in-chief Holden Thorp put it in 2020, 'science thrives when its advocates are shrewd politicians but suffers when its opponents are better at politics.' We agree, and further insist: scientists must reckon honestly and explicitly with the ways in which the knowledge they produce, and the processes by which they produce it, are already and unavoidably political. In doing so, scientists may lose the shallow authority they have harbored by pretending to be above the political fray. They will instead have to grapple with their own political perspectives constantly, as part of the scientific process—a rougher road, no doubt, but one that will lead us to a stronger science, both more empirically rigorous and more politically resilient. Imagine if scientists seized this moment to remake science even while fighting for it. As MacArthur Genius and feminist science studies scholar Ruha Benjamin recently stated: imagination is '[not] an ephemeral afterthought that we have the luxury to dismiss or romanticize, but a resource, a battleground.' And, she continues: 'most people are forced to live inside someone else's imagination.' United in the goal of building a stronger science, we call upon scientists to put our imaginations to work differently, in ways that move us through this nightmare portal into a dreamier world, where justice is not cropped out of scientific endeavors but rather centered and celebrated. Ambika Kamath is trained as a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She lives, works, and grows community in Oakland, California, on Ohlone land Melina Packer is Assistant Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, on Ho-Chunk Nation land. She is the author of Toxic Sexual Politics: Economic Poisons and Endocrine Disruptions
BBC News
7 hours ago
- BBC News
Turbulence is increasing. Here's how the aviation industry is trying to smooth things out
Climate change is creating stronger turbulence. Aircraft designers hope innovative new techniques will reduce its effects. "We saw blood on the ceiling… It was just complete havoc." This was one passenger's description of the scene after a Singapore Airlines flight was hit by severe turbulence while passing over the south of Myanmar in 2024. A lot of people were on the floor." Early this spring, a United Airlines Boeing 787 also hit severe turbulence while cruising above the Philippines. A flight attendant was thrown against the ceiling, resulting in a concussion and a broken arm. Turbulence incidents like these are increasing as a result of human-caused climate change. Severe clear-air turbulence (Cat), meaning very rough air that is invisible to satellites, radar and the human eye, has increased 55% since 1979 – when reliable meteorological records began, according to research by Paul Williams, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading. Turbulence is expected to treble worldwide by the 2050s and will likely have a major impact on routes across East Asia and the North Atlantic. It could affect people's willingness to fly at all. Among the most common reasons people give when justifying a fear of flying are loss of control and a past experience with turbulence. But turbulence, besides being potentially dangerous, also costs the aviation industry money, causing wear and tear to vehicles and lengthening some flights as pilots try to evade it. Such manoeuvres mean using up more fuel and increasing emissions. Although turbulence is usually a matter of discomfort rather than injury or death, the rising volume of chaotic motions in the atmosphere means airlines, scientists and engineers are faced with coming up with ways of mitigating the problem. Turbulence Solutions based in Baden, Austria, has developed small "flaplets" that may be added to larger flaps (or ailerons) on aircraft wings. The flaplets adjust their angle slightly in order to counteract changes in airflow based on pressure readings taken immediately in front of them on the wing's leading edge. It helps to stabilise the plane, a bit like how birds use tiny adjustments of their feathers while flying. The company says its technology can reduce turbulence loads felt by passengers by more than 80%. So far it has only tested the technology on small aircraft – though CEO Andras Galffy, himself an aerobatics pilot, feels confident that it will scale to support far larger planes. "The common view is you can either avoid or accept turbulence and deal with it by buckling up and reinforcing the wing," he tells me. "But we say you don't need to accept it. You just need the right counter-signal. For light aircraft there was always this pain but even for commercial aviation it's getting more serious because turbulence is increasing." Flying directly through eddies, vortices and updrafts with minimal disturbance requires not only precision engineering but a lot of advanced mathematics and an analysis of fluid dynamics. (Air, like water, is a fluid). The picture will always be complicated because the fundamental nature of turbulence is that it is chaotic. Small perturbations, from how wind deflects off a building to the wake of another aircraft, can change the behaviour of currents in the air. It's hard for humans to comprehend, but it might be easier for AI. "Machine learning is very good at finding patterns within high dimensional data," says Ricardo Vinuesa, a researcher in fluid mechanics, engineering and AI at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. "Turbulence might just be the perfect application for AI." In a recent experiment, Vinuesa and colleagues from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and TU Delft tested an AI system that controlled "synthetic jets" of air on a simulated aircraft wing. The AI itself was trained using deep reinforcement learning, a process whereby the model learns using trial-and-error, a little like when a toddler learns to walk. "Rather than measuring upstream, we can use AI to create very accurate numerical simulations of what airflow is doing based on measurements taken directly at the wing," he says. "And where neural networks are usually considered black boxes, we use explainable AI, which allows us to determine which measurements are most important to the predictions generated by the model." Vinuesa and his colleagues are working with tech companies to develop the technology further. Last year, a team from Caltech and Nvidia deployed extreme turbulence inside a wind tunnel to test an AI-powered sensing and prediction system for drones with promising results. Researchers at Nasa's Langley Research Center tested a purpose-built microphone capable of detecting ultra-low infrasound frequencies created by whorls of clear-air turbulence up to 300 miles (480km) away. Another approach that has been in active development since at least 2010 involves the use of Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) to create a 3D map of the air around a plane, much as self-driving cars create a point cloud of nearby objects and vehicles, in order to navigate their environment. A 2023 Chinese study proposed a "dual-wavelength" Lidar system, which they claim can observe light-to-moderate Cat between seven and 10km (4.3 to 6.2 miles) ahead of the aircraft. Unfortunately, the lower density of air molecules at high altitude means the instruments become too large, heavy and energy-hungry to be of use in existing commercial aircraft. The convergence of manufacturing, AI and new sensors could transform aviation in the second half of the 21st Century. But what happens today? Before take-off, pilots check weather briefings and study jet stream charts. They consult flight planning software and check forecasts such as the Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG) to which Paul Williams contributed. "About 20 years ago we could forecast around 60% of turbulence," he says, "today it's more like 75% and I suppose it's my career goal to push that number up and up." When I ask what holds back progress, Williams says it is access to turbulence data measured by aircraft. "Research scientists have to buy the data, and it's not cheap." More like this:• Aircraft turbulence is worsening with climate change• The aircraft that may fly like a flock of geese• How long-haul travel may change With advanced computation, AI and ever-more satellites, weather forecasting is improving, but there is a general lack of wind measurements above the Earth's surface. What we do know comes from around 1,300 weather balloon sites around the planet and the accelerometers on roughly 100,000 commercial flights that take to the skies each day. Turbulence Aware from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) anonymises and shares real-time turbulence data and is now used by airlines including Air France, EasyJet and Aer Lingus. For passengers, there are a growing number of apps that provide access to data seen only by pilots and dispatchers up to now, one of which is Turbli. "I use Turbli," says Williams. "I've found it to be reasonably accurate given the proviso that they don't know your exact route so can't be 100% accurate. But it's a little like a hypochondriac googling their symptoms," he adds. "I'm not sure it always helps." -- For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
How have UK insects been affected by 2025's hot, sunny weather?
Certain insects - including ladybirds, butterflies and wasps - are thriving after the warmest and sunniest spring on record across the numbers, the main food source of ladybirds, boomed according to the Royal Horticultural Society after a warm start to the the relative lack of rain this spring and summer could lead to lower insect and amphibian numbers next year since eggs may not be laid and wetland areas are drying up. Insect numbers are difficult to quantify but research suggests that in the longer term, the UK's flying insect population is in decline. An abundance of aphids Whilst the long term picture for the decline of flying insects looks pretty bleak, there is no denying that this year has been a visibly bumper Brown is director of climate change and evidence at The Wildlife Trusts, a federation of 46 independent wildlife conservation charities in the UK. She said: "Many people across the UK are noticing more ladybirds, wasps and other insects this summer – off the back of a very poor year last year for species like butterflies."These are all species that thrive in warm, dry conditions. Earlier in the year the Royal Horticultural Society correctly predicted that we were in for an abundant year for aphids. Whilst that has proved a bit of a headache for gardeners, aphids form an important part of the food chain and are eaten by birds and other Hayley Jones, principal entomologist at the Royal Horticultural Society, says that their numbers are now beginning to drop off as their natural predator - the ladybird - is taking over and playing catch up. 'Extraordinary' year for early butterfly sightings Another much loved flying insect, the butterfly, is often seen as an important indicator of the general health of the immediate environment. These have been in general decline since the Richard Fox, head of science at the Butterfly Conservation charity, says that 2025 has been quite extraordinary in terms of early sightings with 18 species spotted at least two weeks earlier than average and a further 24 species seen at least a week is in contrast to last year's 'butterfly emergency', declared when the lowest numbers of butterflies were ever recorded. This followed a cloudy, wet spring and cool summer. Some varieties, such as the dark green fritillary did not have a single sighting in like all insects, are ectothermic (cold-blooded) and need the warmth and light of the sun to regulate their body temperature and give them energy to fly. This year's warmth has helped them move through their lifecycle quickly meaning their survival rate has been remarkably good; spending less time as caterpillars and as potential bird food. Lepidopterist Martin Wills, who records numbers at Hutchinson's Bank Nature Reserve in south London, confirmed that it has been a fantastic butterfly season so far with record numbers of early sightings. You can take part in 2025's Big Butterfly Count which is on until 10 August and go to BBC Weather to find out what the weather is doing in your area. Bumper year for lavender Not far from Hutchinson's Bank Nature Reserve in south London lie some of the UK's most beautiful lavender fields which are fantastic habitats for butterflies and especially bees. Lavender thrives in sunny, warm conditions with dry summers and mild winters. This year in the UK it has come into full bloom much earlier than usual, meaning more bees and butterflies earlier in the year. Lorna May, the owner of Mayfield Lavender in Surrey, told BBC Weather she had seen a tenfold increase on last year in honey production which she put down to the happy and soaring bee the number of pests have increased too including the tiny, shiny rosemary beetle which has exploded in number this year. To avoid using pesticides, an army of volunteers remove the beautiful bugs by cause for concern of an early lavender bloom for Lorna May is that the plant may die earlier and this could in turn have a notable effect on the local biodiversity for the rest of the summer. According to Kathryn Brown of The Wildlife Trusts, climate change is making things more chaotic for said: "We're waiting to see the statistics for this year, but it's likely that we are seeing greater 'boom and bust' cycles for wildlife as we experience increasing erratic weather patterns." The latest State of the UK Climate report published by the Met Office remarks that weather extremes are now becoming the new normal and that hotter, drier summers will become more of the 10 warmest UK springs have occurred since 2000, with the three warmest since course, wildlife are sensitive not only to weather extremes but also to the use of pesticides and loss of it is often overlooked how important insects are to our biodiversity, playing vital roles in almost every ecosystem. From pollination, to being an essential food source, to helping the decaying process. The Wildlife Trusts suggests you can help declining populations by mowing your lawn less often, supporting local rewilding projects and creating ponds.
