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Big melt seen in Antarctic past, and maybe future
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 18 - 03 - 2009


New information on Antarctica's
regularly melting distant past is giving scientists a
glimpse into what may be a flooded future as the planet
warms up, The Associated Press reported.
The West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed periodically
between 3 million and 5 million years ago, adding more than
16 feet (5 meters) to global sea level, according to the
first examination of soil cores far below the surface of
the Ross ice shelf. Also, new computer models suggest that
warmer waters nearby attacked the ice from below,
triggering those collapses.
Both findings appear in studies published Thursday in the
journal Nature.
«What we're seeing in the past would lead us to believe
that we are on track for losing parts of the West Antarctic
ice sheet,» said Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic
Research Centre at Victoria University in New Zealand and
leader of the study that looked at dirt cores.
The West Antarctic ice sheet is roughly the size of the
American Southwest. In recent years, nearby smaller chunks
have disintegrated and others are close to collapsing. They
are being monitored. But those events are nothing compared
to the massive melt of the entire region that the
researchers studied.
The type of melting triggered by warmer ocean water is
incredibly difficult to stop or reverse, said University of
Massachusetts geoscience professor Robert DeConto,
co-author of the modeling study.


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