Antarctic ice expanding! New Study in journal Nature reveals ’85 years of glacier growth & stability in East Antarctica’ – ‘Ice-sheet wide mass balance estimates start[ed] in late 1970s…have exhibited either an overall mass gain or been relative unchanged’
Early aerial expedition photos reveal 85 years of glacier growth and stability in East Antarctica
Published: 25 May 2024 - Mads Dømgaard, Anders Schomacker, Elisabeth Isaksson, Romain Millan, Flora Huiban, Amaury Dehecq, Amanda Fleischer, Geir Moholdt, Jonas K. Andersen & Anders A. Bjørk
Nature Communications: Our results demonstrate that the stability and growth in ice elevations observed in terrestrial basins over the past few decades are part of a trend spanning at least a century, and highlight the importance of understanding long-term changes when interpreting current dynamics. ... However, in Antarctica, the scarcity of historical climate data makes climate reanalysis estimates before the 1970s largely uncertain10,23, and observed trends cannot clearly be distinguished from natural variability24,25.
Currently, the earliest ice-sheet wide mass balance estimates start in the late 1970s3,6,7, and since then all the sub-regions examined in this study have exhibited either an overall mass gain or been relative unchanged.
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Regardless of potential climatic changes, our results indicate that the glacier in Kemp and Mac Robertson Land and along Ingrid Christensen Coast, have accumulated mass during the past 85 years which inevitably have mitigated parts of the more recent mass loss from the marine basins in East Antarctica and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). This positive accumulation trend and positive mass balance is anticipated to persist as snowfall is expected to increase over the entire EAIS in the next century54,55, and ice sheet modeling studies project positive mass balance estimates in all three sub-regions across all future RCP scenarios56. Lastly, we determine frontal changes of 21 glaciers from 1937 to 2023 (Table S1 and Fig. S11). From the 85 years of observations, we find two distinct regional patterns; one of constant glacier surface elevations and one of ice thickening.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2024/05/31/antarctic-ice-expanding-new-study-in-journal-nature-reveals-85-years-of-glacier-growth-stability-in-east-antarctica/
