The situation is worrying . The US space agency, NASA and the University of California in Irvine (USA) have discovered that a portion of West Antarctica is in a phase of rapid thaw, which they call irreversible decline, so that the glaciers in this location will end melting hopelessly into the sea .
The study area has been the Amundsen Sea sector in West Antarctica and, according to the main author of the work, Eric Rignot, these glaciers will significantly increase the sea level , in a global proportion of 1.2 meters .
According to the expert, glaciers are melting much faster than expected , so "this sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come."
The study, which will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , explains that the collapse of this sector of Antarctica appears to be unstoppable and that it is probably due to an increase in the amount of heat from the ocean below the floating sections of the glaciers, which will cause glaciers to melt even more quickly.
The consequences of this rise in sea level in coastal communities throughout the world could be very serious and, according to experts, the system is in an unstoppable chain reaction situation so that complete thaw could happen, at worst in about 200 years and, at best, in about 1,000 years .
