Climate scientists from the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Washington have found that melting ice in Antarctica may be reversible.
Nature Communications notes that during the study, scientists studied satellite imagery, as well as climate and ocean data, to determine the effects of the melting ice sheet in West Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 3.3 meters. Since the early 1990s, scientists have noticed an acceleration in ice melt in this region due to human-induced climate change over the past century.
Now experts have found marked local differences in the evolution of the West Antarctic ice sheet since 2003 due to climate change. It turns out that the evolution of the ice cover is influenced by changes in the strength and direction of coastal surface winds.
Since the prevailing winds in this part of Antarctica blow from the west, they raise warmer and saltier waters from the ocean depths, reaching the Antarctic coast, and accelerate the melting of ice.
However, during 2003-2015 the prevailing westerly winds off the Amundsen Sea have decreased. This means that deeper, warmer waters cannot penetrate the ice. This is evidenced by the behavior of the ice cover, in which the rate of melting has significantly decreased. Scientists believe this was caused by an unusual deepening of the low-pressure system of the Amundsen Sea, which led to the intrusion of less warm waters.
The results of this study show how difficult it is to determine the behavior of the ice in West Antarctica, which again raises the question of predicting the behavior of the ice continent in the context of global warming.
Source: Linta. RU
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from Technology - Asume Tech https://asumetech.com/changing-winds-slow-down-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica/
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