New York : The East Antarctic ice sheet — one of the two large ice sheets in Antarctica and the largest on the entire planet — may contribute substantially to global sea level rise, finds a study.
The East Antarctic ice sheet, with more than 12,000 feet thick ice in many places, was thought to be among the most stable, not gaining or losing mass even as ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland are shrinking.
The study, based on the first-ever oceanographic survey of East Antarctica’s Sabrina Coast revealed that the glaciers in this region may be particularly susceptible to climate change.
This is because they flow from the Aurora Basin which has been stable only for the past few million years, and if the ice sheet in the Basin melted, global sea levels would rise more than 3-5 meters (10-15 feet).
“It turns out that for much of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet’s history, it was not the commonly perceived large stable ice sheet with only minor changes in size over millions of years,” said Sean Gulick, Professor at the University of Texas – Austin. —-IANS