The collapse, recorded by satellite imagery, marked the first time in human history that the icy area had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a horrible hot episode last week, when temperatures rose more than 40 C higher than normal in some parts of East Antarctica. Satellite images show the region has shrunk rapidly over the past two years, and now scientists say they wonder if they overestimated East Antarctica’s stability and resilience to global warming, which is rapidly melting ice on the smaller west side and the vulnerable peninsula. The 1,200-square-kilometer ice shelf held in the Conger and Glenzer Glaciers by warmer water collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He said that scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent and that makes it worrying. Complete collapse of the Conger ice cream parlor in East Antarctica (~ 1200 sq. Km.) ~ March 15, in combination of images pic.twitter.com/1wzmuOwdQn α> – @ CapComCatWalk
“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf has obviously been there for thousands of years and will never be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff. The issue is not how much ice was lost in that collapse, Neff and Walker said. It is negligible. But it’s more about where it happened. Neff said he was concerned that previous assumptions about the stability of East Antarctica might not be so accurate. And this is important because the water that freezes in East Antarctica, if it melted – and this is a process of millennia, if not more – would raise the seas around the world by more than 50 meters. It is more than five times the ice in the most vulnerable layer of ice in West Antarctica, where scientists have amassed much of their research. Scientists have been seeing the ice shelf shrink slightly since the 1970s, Neff said. Then in 2020, shelf ice loss accelerated and she lost about half of herself every month, Walker said. “We’re probably seeing the effect of long-term increased ocean warming there,” Walker said. “It just melts and melts.” And then last week’s overheating “is probably something like, you know, the drop that overflowed the glass on the camel’s back.”