BONN, GERMANY — The acceleration of Antarctic ice loss in recent decades may already mark the beginning of a “self-sustaining and irreversible period of ice sheet retreat,” according to a study measuring historical ice sheet debris, which has identified patterns behind eight episodes of ice sheet destabilization across recent millennia that could also apply now.
The Nature Communications journal study found that in the eight previous episodes, mass Antarctic ice sheet destabilization “switched on” within “only a decade or two,” with bursts of iceberg calving causing the sheet itself to destabilize within only a few years each time, before continuing for many centuries, according to a press release published on Eurekalert.
The study also found that sea levels responded to these tipping points accordingly, also rising for several centuries and up to a millennium in some cases.
One study co-author, Zoe Thomas, summarized why we should worry: “If it just takes one decade to tip a system like this, that’s actually quite scary, because if the Antarctic Ice Sheet behaves in future like it did in the past, we must be experiencing the tipping right now.”