Latest news with #WestAntarcticIceSheet
Time of India
08-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Antarctica's hidden threat: Melting ice could spark hundreds of explosive volcanoes
A new study has revealed a startling link between climate change and increased volcanic activity, warning that the rapid melting of glaciers and ice caps, especially in regions like West Antarctica, could trigger hundreds of explosive volcanic eruptions worldwide. The research, based on geological data from Chile's Andes Mountains, demonstrates how retreating ice removes pressure on underground magma chambers, making eruptions more likely and more violent. Scientists believe this mechanism, already observed in Iceland, could apply across several glaciated regions of the world. The biggest concern lies beneath Antarctica's thick ice, where at least 100 volcanoes remain buried. As global temperatures rise, this hidden volcanic threat could become a dangerous feedback loop that further accelerates climate change. From ice to fire: The chain reaction beneath our feet According to the study presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Prague, glaciers suppress volcanic activity by exerting immense pressure on magma chambers beneath Earth's surface. As the ice melts due to global heating, this pressure lifts, allowing gases in magma to expand and erupt explosively. Researchers found that after the last Ice Age, regions like Chile experienced a surge in volcanism, offering a chilling preview of what could happen as modern glaciers disappear. Case study from Chile's Andes Lead researcher Pablo Moreno-Yaeger and his team studied Mocho-Choshuenco, a volcano in Chile, using radioisotope dating of volcanic rocks. Their findings show that thick ice cover between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago suppressed eruptions. Once the ice melted around 13,000 years ago, the volcano erupted more frequently and more violently. The magma became more viscous due to prolonged underground buildup, increasing the explosiveness when finally released. The growing risk in Antarctica The West Antarctic Ice Sheet , already under threat from rising temperatures, covers at least 100 known volcanoes. Scientists warn that the loss of this ice could unleash significant volcanic activity in the region. While eruptions can temporarily cool the planet by releasing sunlight-blocking particles, sustained volcanic activity would inject carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, intensifying global warming. Global implications beyond Antarctica Though much of the focus is on Antarctica, other glaciated regions such as North America, New Zealand, and Russia could also be at risk. The findings urge scientists and policymakers to monitor glacial regions more closely and prepare for possible climate volcano feedback loops. More research is now considered 'critically important' to understand how warming temperatures may interact with Earth's geologic systems. A call for urgent study Despite the potentially massive impact, volcanism remains under-studied in climate change models. Researchers say it's vital to factor in geological responses like eruptions into our understanding of climate risks. As more glaciers retreat and expose ancient volcanoes, the Earth's response may not be slow or quiet, but loud, explosive, and globally disruptive.
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘Positive cascades could help accelerate change': social tipping points expert on fixing climate crisis
Timothy Lenton is a professor of climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter. He started working on tipping points in the 1990s, making him one of the first scientists in the world to study this form of planetary risk. In an upcoming book, Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis, he argues the Earth has entered an 'unstable period' but humanity can still prevail if we can trigger positive social and economic tipping points to reverse the damage that has already been done. On 30 June, he will host a global conference on tipping points. How do you define a tipping point?A tipping point is where change becomes self-propelling within a system, meaning it will shift from one state to another. That can happen because the balance of feedback in the system switches from damping feedback to amplifying feedback. The result can look very rapid and irreversible. How has our understanding of these risks changed?We first published a map of climate tipping elements in 2008, Since then, we have added much more than we have subtracted from that map. And, unfortunately, in the intervening 17 years, the evidence suggests we're much closer to some of these tipping points than we thought. Which tipping points might we have passed?Things are undoubtedly happening faster than anticipated. The tipping points of greatest concern include the West Antarctic ice sheet, where the loss of a significant chunk of the ice sheet is self-propelling, which could raise the world's sea levels by about 1.2 metres. There is also the Greenland ice sheet, which is losing mass at an accelerating rate. Then we have the permafrost, parts of which are already passing localised tipping points – and that's adding methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Then there's the unprecedented bleaching and dieback of coral reefs, which hundreds of millions of people depend on for their livelihoods. And which are close?There's a tipping point in the circulation of the north Atlantic Ocean, when deep water stops forming in the middle of the subpolar gyre south-west of Greenland. That system seems quite volatile, and a tipping point there is like a small version of a bigger tipping point of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), which studies suggest is at much greater risk than we thought even a few years ago. That in turn could trigger monsoon tipping points in west Africa and India. I'd also note the risk of tipping Amazon rainforest dieback from a mixture of climate change and direct human disruption. Unfortunately, I could reel off quite a few more. How accurate are the predictions?If anything, we have underestimated the risks. When we did our first assessment in 2008, we thought Greenland was close to a big tipping point. We haven't changed that judgment, but we thought West Antarctica would need at least 3C of warming [above pre-industrial levels]. Unfortunately, everything that's been observed since suggests we were way too optimistic. As a rule, the more we learn, the closer we think the tipping points are – and meanwhile we've been warming the planet up. It's like running faster into a sea that is rising to drown us. Why has it taken so long for the world to talk about these catastrophic threats?In the climate science community, we have tended to concentrate on assessing what's the most likely thing to happen, but the more important question is: what's the worst thing that could happen? That's the difference between a scientific assessment and a risk assessment. I would argue we've not been treating climate change as a risk assessment. That is also because a lot of well-funded entities have been systematically undermining the knowledge consensus on climate change, which has forced the scientific community to defend what's in effect 19th-century physics. That hasn't put us in a great position to emphasise tipping point risks, which inherently have more uncertainty around them. Why do we need to talk about them now?Because tipping point risks are real and potentially existential. If we have a tipping point in the Atlantic Ocean – the so-called Amoc – we could lose more than half the area for growing staple crops worldwide. It would cause water security crises and severely disrupt the monsoons in west Africa and India, which would affect billions of people. We have to level up to those risks, better understand them and how close they are, and what things we can do in response. Even if we can't stop the events happening, we can do things that reduce the vulnerability of people exposed to the risks. That is why we are drawing attention to tipping points. This is not as a council of despair; on the contrary, it is more like a council of practicality. In terms of the upfront costs to decarbonise the global economy, it is a great investment for the return you get, which is lowering the risk of otherwise catastrophic outcomes. It would help if the IPCC [the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] took a more in-depth look at tipping points. A large number of countries wanted to see an IPCC special report on tipping points in this assessment cycle, but the IPCC said no. Instead there's due to be a chapter in the next assessment report. Is there an alternative?Yes. I and more than 200 other researchers have published a global tipping points report, and we're writing another one for Cop30, [the UN climate change summit which takes place in Brazil, in November]. We felt the risk was important to communicate and this is a timely moment. So we are trying to fill in the assessment gap in an accessible way. People are crying out for that. I understand the global tipping points conference will also look at positive tipping points in technology, economics and politics?Yes. [There are some] more optimistic scenarios; the impacts of wind power and photovoltaic innovation, or the knock-on effects of campaigning by Greta Thunberg and others. There are also policy feedbacks that could create a change in the landscape in a good way, where you start a policy path towards the renewable energy revolution that's very hard to reverse. That is arguably what the architects of the German feed-in tariffs for renewables managed to do. They made it hard for the doubters to change course even after a change of government. Has renewable energy reached a positive tipping point?Yes, our analysis suggests that solar photovoltaic power is now in a phase of self-propelling global uptake with exponential growth of installed generating capacity, doubling every two years or less. Factoring in the cost of battery storage, solar is already the cheapest source of new power in most of the world, and for every doubling of installed capacity its price drops by nearly a quarter. This is rapidly making solar power the cheapest source of electricity ever, which brings many benefits, including access to electricity for the roughly 700 million people who don't currently have it. And electric vehicles?Yes, the price of batteries plummeted nearly tenfold in a decade as the range you can get from a given mass of battery increased by nearly a factor of three. This has brought China and several European markets to the tipping point where adoption of EVs is self-propelling: the more EVs that get bought, the better and the cheaper they get, encouraging further adoption. The US is lagging behind, but the global south is starting to reap the benefits of electrifying mobility, as it is much cheaper to run an electric rickshaw in India or an electric motorbike taxi in east Africa than their fossil-fuelled equivalents. Any other examples of potential positive tipping points?I'm working on regenerative nature. We already see cases where degraded ecosystems have been tipped back into a better state – for example, when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and started preying on elk, it triggered abrupt vegetation recovery, or when sea otters returned to north Pacific coastal ecosystems and started feasting on sea urchins it tipped the recovery of kelp forests. We also see social tipping points that are nature-positive, where community conservation initiatives, like locally managed marine protected areas, spread rapidly and widely among and across societies. Can you explain cascading feedbacks?In all complex systems – such as the climate and the economy – if you can tip one thing, it can have consequences for other bits of the system. If you tip one part of the system it can make tipping another part of the system more likely. For example, if you've suffered a medical shock it can have knock-on effects on other parts of the body. In the climate, these causal connections can be quite significant and strong. In Earth's history, when there were tipping points in the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean, that tipped major shifts in the tropical monsoons of west Africa and India. In the economy, a cascade can be more positive. For example, an investment in renewable energy can bring forward a tipping point in other sectors. It basically means renewables are making electricity cheaper than it has ever been, and that incentivises electrifying mobility, like cars and trucks and buses, or electrifying heating in homes. At the same time, batteries get cheaper because of economies of scale, which then helps to balance renewable electricity supply and demand. So feedbacks between sectors of the economy can create tipping points that reinforce each other. We've recently mapped out a bunch of positive tipping cascades that could help accelerate change to zero greenhouse gas emissions. What should the world do at Cop30 in Belém to address tipping points?We need policymakers to implement policies that bring forward the positive tipping points we need to stop greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the bad climate tipping points. If the EU and China were to coordinate, it could be enough to shift the balance towards clean green alternatives. Even with Trump in the United States, the beauty of tipping points is you don't need everybody, you typically only need a fifth to tip to the new alternative and then you get to a situation where everybody else is compelled to follow. Tipping points – in the Amazon, Antarctic, coral reefs and more – could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with devastating effects. Here, we ask the experts about the latest science – and how it makes them feel. Read more
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
‘Positive cascades could help accelerate change': social tipping points expert on fixing climate crisis
Timothy Lenton is a professor of climate change and Earth system science at the University of Exeter. He started working on tipping points in the 1990s, making him one of the first scientists in the world to study this form of planetary risk. In an upcoming book, Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis, he argues the Earth has entered an 'unstable period' but humanity can still prevail if we can trigger positive social and economic tipping points to reverse the damage that has already been done. On 30 June, he will host a global conference on tipping points. How do you define a tipping point?A tipping point is where change becomes self-propelling within a system, meaning it will shift from one state to another. That can happen because the balance of feedback in the system switches from damping feedback to amplifying feedback. The result can look very rapid and irreversible. How has our understanding of these risks changed?We first published a map of climate tipping elements in 2008, Since then, we have added much more than we have subtracted from that map. And, unfortunately, in the intervening 17 years, the evidence suggests we're much closer to some of these tipping points than we thought. Which tipping points might we have passed?Things are undoubtedly happening faster than anticipated. The tipping points of greatest concern include the West Antarctic ice sheet, where the loss of a significant chunk of the ice sheet is self-propelling, which could raise the world's sea levels by about 1.2 metres. There is also the Greenland ice sheet, which is losing mass at an accelerating rate. Then we have the permafrost, parts of which are already passing localised tipping points – and that's adding methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Then there's the unprecedented bleaching and dieback of coral reefs, which hundreds of millions of people depend on for their livelihoods. And which are close?There's a tipping point in the circulation of the north Atlantic Ocean, when deep water stops forming in the middle of the subpolar gyre south-west of Greenland. That system seems quite volatile, and a tipping point there is like a small version of a bigger tipping point of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), which studies suggest is at much greater risk than we thought even a few years ago. That in turn could trigger monsoon tipping points in west Africa and India. I'd also note the risk of tipping Amazon rainforest dieback from a mixture of climate change and direct human disruption. Unfortunately, I could reel off quite a few more. How accurate are the predictions?If anything, we have underestimated the risks. When we did our first assessment in 2008, we thought Greenland was close to a big tipping point. We haven't changed that judgment, but we thought West Antarctica would need at least 3C of warming [above pre-industrial levels]. Unfortunately, everything that's been observed since suggests we were way too optimistic. As a rule, the more we learn, the closer we think the tipping points are – and meanwhile we've been warming the planet up. It's like running faster into a sea that is rising to drown us. Why has it taken so long for the world to talk about these catastrophic threats?In the climate science community, we have tended to concentrate on assessing what's the most likely thing to happen, but the more important question is: what's the worst thing that could happen? That's the difference between a scientific assessment and a risk assessment. I would argue we've not been treating climate change as a risk assessment. That is also because a lot of well-funded entities have been systematically undermining the knowledge consensus on climate change, which has forced the scientific community to defend what's in effect 19th-century physics. That hasn't put us in a great position to emphasise tipping point risks, which inherently have more uncertainty around them. Why do we need to talk about them now?Because tipping point risks are real and potentially existential. If we have a tipping point in the Atlantic Ocean – the so-called Amoc – we could lose more than half the area for growing staple crops worldwide. It would cause water security crises and severely disrupt the monsoons in west Africa and India, which would affect billions of people. We have to level up to those risks, better understand them and how close they are, and what things we can do in response. Even if we can't stop the events happening, we can do things that reduce the vulnerability of people exposed to the risks. That is why we are drawing attention to tipping points. This is not as a council of despair; on the contrary, it is more like a council of practicality. In terms of the upfront costs to decarbonise the global economy, it is a great investment for the return you get, which is lowering the risk of otherwise catastrophic outcomes. It would help if the IPCC [the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] took a more in-depth look at tipping points. A large number of countries wanted to see an IPCC special report on tipping points in this assessment cycle, but the IPCC said no. Instead there's due to be a chapter in the next assessment report. Is there an alternative?Yes. I and more than 200 other researchers have published a global tipping points report, and we're writing another one for Cop30, [the UN climate change summit which takes place in Brazil, in November]. We felt the risk was important to communicate and this is a timely moment. So we are trying to fill in the assessment gap in an accessible way. People are crying out for that. I understand the global tipping points conference will also look at positive tipping points in technology, economics and politics?Yes. [There are some] more optimistic scenarios; the impacts of wind power and photovoltaic innovation, or the knock-on effects of campaigning by Greta Thunberg and others. There are also policy feedbacks that could create a change in the landscape in a good way, where you start a policy path towards the renewable energy revolution that's very hard to reverse. That is arguably what the architects of the German feed-in tariffs for renewables managed to do. They made it hard for the doubters to change course even after a change of government. Has renewable energy reached a positive tipping point?Yes, our analysis suggests that solar photovoltaic power is now in a phase of self-propelling global uptake with exponential growth of installed generating capacity, doubling every two years or less. Factoring in the cost of battery storage, solar is already the cheapest source of new power in most of the world, and for every doubling of installed capacity its price drops by nearly a quarter. This is rapidly making solar power the cheapest source of electricity ever, which brings many benefits, including access to electricity for the roughly 700 million people who don't currently have it. And electric vehicles?Yes, the price of batteries plummeted nearly tenfold in a decade as the range you can get from a given mass of battery increased by nearly a factor of three. This has brought China and several European markets to the tipping point where adoption of EVs is self-propelling: the more EVs that get bought, the better and the cheaper they get, encouraging further adoption. The US is lagging behind, but the global south is starting to reap the benefits of electrifying mobility, as it is much cheaper to run an electric rickshaw in India or an electric motorbike taxi in east Africa than their fossil-fuelled equivalents. Any other examples of potential positive tipping points?I'm working on regenerative nature. We already see cases where degraded ecosystems have been tipped back into a better state – for example, when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and started preying on elk, it triggered abrupt vegetation recovery, or when sea otters returned to north Pacific coastal ecosystems and started feasting on sea urchins it tipped the recovery of kelp forests. We also see social tipping points that are nature-positive, where community conservation initiatives, like locally managed marine protected areas, spread rapidly and widely among and across societies. Can you explain cascading feedbacks?In all complex systems – such as the climate and the economy – if you can tip one thing, it can have consequences for other bits of the system. If you tip one part of the system it can make tipping another part of the system more likely. For example, if you've suffered a medical shock it can have knock-on effects on other parts of the body. In the climate, these causal connections can be quite significant and strong. In Earth's history, when there were tipping points in the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean, that tipped major shifts in the tropical monsoons of west Africa and India. In the economy, a cascade can be more positive. For example, an investment in renewable energy can bring forward a tipping point in other sectors. It basically means renewables are making electricity cheaper than it has ever been, and that incentivises electrifying mobility, like cars and trucks and buses, or electrifying heating in homes. At the same time, batteries get cheaper because of economies of scale, which then helps to balance renewable electricity supply and demand. So feedbacks between sectors of the economy can create tipping points that reinforce each other. We've recently mapped out a bunch of positive tipping cascades that could help accelerate change to zero greenhouse gas emissions. What should the world do at Cop30 in Belém to address tipping points?We need policymakers to implement policies that bring forward the positive tipping points we need to stop greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the bad climate tipping points. If the EU and China were to coordinate, it could be enough to shift the balance towards clean green alternatives. Even with Trump in the United States, the beauty of tipping points is you don't need everybody, you typically only need a fifth to tip to the new alternative and then you get to a situation where everybody else is compelled to follow. Tipping points – in the Amazon, Antarctic, coral reefs and more – could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with devastating effects. Here, we ask the experts about the latest science – and how it makes them feel. Read more
Daily Mail
03-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
West Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the verge of COLLAPSING - sparking 13 feet of irreversible global sea level rise, scientists warn
Containing around 750,000 cubic miles of ice – enough to fill Wembley stadium nearly 3 billion times – the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a rich reservoir of precious frozen freshwater. 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.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists observe concerning 'unexpected changes' in Antarctic ice shelf: 'Added an exclamation point to the ... narrative'
Scientists have used satellite technology to observe the collapse of a massive ice shelf in Antarctica, sounding alarm bells over the implications. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, scientists used satellite imagery to document and chronicle the collapse of the Conger-Glenzer ice shelf, which occurred in 2022 over the course of just a few days. The collapse was notable because the shelf was located in Eastern Antarctica, a region previously thought to be stable and less susceptible to this sort of failure. What they learned in studying data and imagery of the shelf over a 25-year period was that, rather than being caused by surface melt from rising temperatures, the Conger-Glenzer shelf collapsed because of ocean-induced thinning and structural weakening. Do you think America does a good job of protecting its natural beauty? Definitely Only in some areas No way I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. In other words, warmer, salty ocean water ate away at the structure, destabilizing it in the years leading up to its collapse. Catherine Walker, an associate scientist who studied the collapse of Conger-Glenzer, noted that while ice shelf collapses have been documented before, the location and nature of this collapse was both notable and concerning. "Long considered more stable than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, this event added an exclamation point to the accelerating narrative of unexpected changes being observed in East Antarctica," she said, per the ABC. Coastal ice shelves play an essential role in maintaining the state of Antarctica. They serve as a buffer to the ice shelf that sits in the continent's center, which would add a catastrophic 58 meters of water to the world's oceans if they were to fully melt. As the coastal shelves break apart, they allow more ocean water and more heat to reach the central continental shelf, which makes the specter of a full melt more tangible. The best thing we can do to protect the Antarctic is to reduce pollution. This can mean investing in clean energy over planet-heating natural gas or oil-based energy and pushing for legislation to help reduce methane and nitrous oxide pollution. Action can even be as simple as reducing your reliance on high-emission household items such as leaf blowers and lawnmowers, swapping those tools for quieter, lightweight electric ones instead. But a problem of this size is going to take collective, drastic action to fix, so supporting environmentally conscious politicians and leaders is essential. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
