I’m sure you’ve seen the film scene. A character runs out onto a frozen lake only to suddenly stop when they hear a loud cracking noise. Looking down they see an increasing number of jagged lines opening up in the ice beneath them. Turning around they realise that they have gone too far to simply turn back. They are trapped.
These were my thoughts when I read about new research from Antarctica. There, the ice is literally cracking under our feet and the consequences for the rest of the world could not be more significant. The ice in question is a section of the vast Thwaites Glacier which is a major portion of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, comprising over two million cubic kilometres of ice. Ice that is now on the move.
Glaciers, by their nature, are dynamic. They are born as snow which becomes compressed into ice in mountain ranges. Under its own weight, the glacier flows like a slow motion river down valleys and ultimately, in the case of Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, to the sea. Pushed onwards by the vast pressure of ice behind it, the glacier juts out far into the Antarctic ocean.
At the fringes, colossal sections break off and float away as icebergs. Scientists have been increasingly monitoring the Thwaites Glacier because it is losing mass at around 50 billion tons a year. There is now alarming evidence that this huge region of ice may be only years away from catastrophic failure.
This evidence comes courtesy of an international team of scientists who reported their findings at the American Geophysical Union this week. They found that the water underneath the Thwaites Glacier was 1°C or 2°C above freezing.
More from Opinion
This warmer water is melting the ice away from its “grounding points”. These are a bit like the wedges that hold a ship up on slipway. Slipways are used in boat building as they allow the hull and rest of the ship to be constructed on dry land. Once the ship is finished, the wedges are removed and the ship slides down into the sea.
Undersea mountains are the grounding points that hold back the Thwaites Glacier from falling into the Antarctic Ocean. But the ice surrounding these wedges is melting. Not only that – the scientists discovered vast cracks working up from the bottom of these glaciers. These are appearing at the same time as cracks that span nearly the entire surface of the Thwaites Glacier.
What this means is that a section of the Thwaites Glacier the size of Florida is likely to break apart within the next five to 10 years. The future of the entire Glacier is becoming increasingly uncertain. Sea levels could rise by over 60cm if it is lost. Loss of the entire Western Antarctic Ice Sheet would increase sea levels by over three metres. If we are lucky this will take centuries and coastal communities will have time to adapt.
But this is only one of multiple tipping points in the climate system, any of which could wreak havoc. Rapid cuts to fossil fuel use now are needed to avoid them. If we fail to do that, we risk looking back at 2021 as the moment we realised cracks were opening up in civilisation itself.
Churches deserve a second coming - they're perfect rave venues