When viewed from space, a very rude glacier in Antarctica was found stealing ice from neighbors as they melted.
In a new study published in the Journal Ice Circleresearchers from the University of Leeds in England found that a glacier in the western West Antarctic has been engaged in “pirated ice”, basically sparse due to melting due to neighbors.
Using satellite images taken between 2005 and 2022, environmental researchers were surprised to find that while the three glaciers in Kohler East, Pope and Smith were already starting to be 51% faster, their neighbor Kohler West actually slowed down 10%.
These different sparse speeds seem to have strange consequences, says Heather Selley, a PhD researcher at Leeds.
“We believe that the observed slowdown to the Kohler West glacier is due to the redirection of ice flow toward neighbors – eastern Kohler,” she explained in a press release. “This is due to a huge change in the surface slope of Kohler West, which is probably due to the very different sparse rates of its adjacent glaciers.
Like a child drawing water from a friend’s bucket, this “ice piracy” involves redirecting ice from one glacier to another, and the accelerated glacier is essentially “thief” ice from slower neighbors. ”
Although this phenomenon is not well known to environmental scientists, it took hundreds or even thousands of years to happen in the past. Watching it happening in just 18 years was “engaging” but also disturbing, Seley said.
As the European Space Agency pointed out, the Antarctic region where ice pirated this time has the “highest sparseness rate”.
The faster these glaciers melt, the higher the sea level rises, which can have serious consequences worldwide. Although scientists are well aware of the dangers of glacier retreats, this rapid ice pirated effect seems to bring curveballs into their knowledge.
“Our results show that there is substantial [melting] “In this Antarctic region, the Antarctic region has the highest speeds. Both are key indicators of ice sheet stability and therefore have implications for predicting future sea level changes,” Sely said.
This theft cannot greatly change the speed at which glaciers melt into the ocean and increase sea level accordingly. But this is still an unexpected result of climate change, and until now, science has witnessed such rapid occurrence.
More information about glaciers: Glaciers shrink at an astonishing rate
