Potsdam scientists spread a shrill warning: A type ice cap in Antarctica threatens to thaw. Glaciers could flow into the sea – the water level would rise by four meters worldwide. Have the researchers thus unmasked a new climate risk? No.

Climate scientists are increasingly turning to the distant future. Recently attended a study sensation that continues the rise of the oceans wrote for 2000 years and due to put the demise of 136 World Heritage Sites in prospect. Now take the same author , Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK , another delicious place the focus of his long-term scenarios : the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. There threaten the collapse of the ice sheet , which could raise the sea level by four meters .

Only a kind of cork out of ice blocking the glaciers in the hinterland , it prevents so far that the ice streams into the ocean ergössen , write Lever man and his PIK – mate Matthias Mengel in the journal ” Nature Climate Change ” . The ice lay in Wilkes Basin steep as in a tilted bottle, Mengel explained in a statement by his institute . ” If the cork is pulled , they wear out. ”

The Wilkes – basin on the New Zealand side facing East Antarctica is a dramatic region : Steep rises his ice edge from the often stormy , cold Southern Ocean. Steady rises the white landscape, in the hinterland of the ice body swells three kilometers into the air. Slowly the glaciers flowing into the sea , where they calve icebergs over again. The question of how much the expected climate warming could accelerate thawing of the masses , science has for a long time .

Ice Collapse Forecast:”Not really surprising”

The UN Climate Change Report ( IPCC) , which summarizes the climate knowledge , are reticent : so far show no trend , the region , the East Antarctic ice seem stable. The extremely cold ocean , as well as snowfall same ice losses from so far . The new simulation but now manifest danger for the more distant future , says Lever man . He warns : “So far was only the West Antarctic as unstable, but now we know that its larger counterpart in the East is perhaps ten times in danger.”

Have the researchers thus unmasked a new climate risk? No. The UN climate report writes about the region: ” Potentially unstable marine ice sheets is also available in the Eastern Antarctic , for example, in the Wilkes Basin. ” Would complete the melted ice raise the ocean at nine meters , writes the IPCC . The risk was known , confirmed Robert Larter from British Antarctic Survey BAS . The result of the new study “is not really surprising ,” adds Nicholas Golledge from the University of Wellington in New Zealand.

However, both experts find kind words for the study from Potsdam: The modeling is useful because it gives concrete theories, says Golledge. The three-dimensional digital map of the Antarctic “Bedmap2” allows researchers such new environmental simulations. But how likely is the catastrophic collapse of the glaciers in Wilkes Basin?

Would be a prerequisite for the drama that is significantly warmed the sea off East Antarctica. The protective Eiskorken lies partly in a well under water. For their simulation Mengel and Lever man have warmed the ocean of the region virtually two and a half degrees. The result: If the Eiskorken only gone times, was the way for 80 times more ice that flowed from the hinterland into the sea.

Ice Collapse Forecast:Drama of Earth’s history

The principle is known from West Antarctica, explains BAS researchers Larter: There slide for two decades reinforced ice in the Amundsen Sea, after the preferred underwater ice edge had given way. Is like to be feared in the east of the southern continent?

What causes the isolated Arctic Ocean could heat up there in such a way that it anfresse the ice corks , leaves open the new study. ” It would have to be done to change the oceanic circulation , so that considerably warmer water to the coast ,” says Henry Miller of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research AWI . Currently, the opposite happens : sea ice is spreading.

In the distant future , with progressive climate warming but can happen. Finally, the ice of East Antarctica was in the distant past, probably much disappeared several times , such as in the Pliocene and Miocene geological eras , says Gollegde .

But there was a lack of accurate documents for Miller added : “Unfortunately , we lack knowledge of the deposits, which would allow us to make statements about whether such a melt is earlier done before,” says the veteran Antarctic explorer . Such data but can not win with computer simulation , but only with holes on site, in the icy cold of the East Antarctica .

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