Warming to speed icesheet collapse by 100,000 years

The Economic times , Thursday, March 19, 2009
Correspondent : AFP
PARIS: Manmade climate change is set to hasten the disintegration of a massive ice sheet in Antarctica by 100,000 years, boosting sea levels some five metres, according to a pair of studies published today.

The research, which matches new ice core data with a simulation of past and future changes in the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), reveals for the first time regular cycles of "catastrophic collapse" and reformation reaching back five million years.

Cycles lasted 40,000 years during the first three-fifths of this period, but have since more than doubled in length, explained David Pollard, a scientist at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of one of the studies.

"But with global warming we are cutting short a natural cycle," he said.

"The two studies combined show it is really likely that the WAIS will collapse in the next few thousand years. In the absence of human influence, it would probably happen only 100,000 years from now," he said.

Rising sea levels is arguably the most serious long-term threat from climate change.

The global ocean water mark is likely to go up by at least a metre before the end of the century, recent research has shown.

That is enough to wipe out several small island nations, and to disrupt or displace tens of millions of people living in heavily-populated and low-lying delta areas in East Asia, African and the Indian subcontinent.

 
SOURCE : Thursday, March 19, 2009
 


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