The temperature has risen 2.5 ºC in the last half century in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is one of the areas of the planet most affected by global warming. Among other consequences, it has been known, thanks to a new study by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published in the journal The Cryosphere , that the great ice shelf called Larsen C is thinning both on the surface and at the base.
The causes of weight loss is one of the objectives of the investigation. In the words of its main author, Paul R. Holland, “We knew for more than a decade that Larsen C was downsizing, but we didn’t know why. Some scientists thought it was from merging with the ocean and others from warming. We prove that both factors are important ”.
The Larsen C ice shelf – whose neighbors Larsen A and B collapsed in 1995 and 2002, respectively – is losing volume at both the surface and the base. The research team combined satellite data and eight radar soundings carried out over 15 years (from 1998 to 2012), and found that the ice on the Larsen C shelf has shrunk by about four meters, and about a meter in the surface. The upper layer of snow is becoming more compact, probably due to increased melting due to a warmer environment.
There are also losses from warmer ocean currents or changes in ice flow. If this vast ice barrier, which is larger than Galicia and ten times larger than Larsen B, were to collapse, the glacial tributaries would flow faster into the ocean, contributing to sea level rise.
