A new study published Monday warns that “unstoppable” melting in West Antarctica could make a three-meter increase in sea level “unavoidable.”
According to researchers at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the vulnerable Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica “has most likely been destabilized.” They point to recent studies indicating that this area of the ice continent is “the first element in the climate system about to tip.”
“If the Amundsen Sea sector is destabilized, then the entire marine part of West Antarctica will be discharged into the ocean.”
—Johannes Feldmann & Anders Levermann, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
If that is true, computer modeling suggests the consequences could be catastrophic, initiating a process “which is then unstoppable and goes on for thousands of years,” said Johannes Feldmann, lead author of the study.
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“The result of this study is an if–then statement,” reads the paper, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “[I]f the Amundsen Sea sector is destabilized, then the entire marine part of West Antarctica will be discharged into the ocean.”
It continues: “The currently observed retreat in West Antarctica hence might mark the beginning of a millennial period of self-sustained ice discharge from West Antarctica and require long-term global adaptation of coastal protection, such as the building or rebuilding or raising of dykes, the construction of seawalls, or the realization of land fills in the hinterland.”