Antarctica’s land is rising rapidly and will impact sea level rise

September 24 () –

The solid land at the base of the Antarctic ice sheet is changing surprisingly quickly, with uplift due to thawing in decades instead of thousands of years.

A team led by the Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) developed –with this finding as a result– a 3D model of the Earth’s interior using geophysical field measurements from the Antarctic Land Survey Network (ANET) of the Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET) project.

According to a new study, if humans can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming is slowed, these upward changes in solid land could reduce Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise by about 40%, significantly strengthening best-case scenarios for global sea level rise. according to a new study published in Science Advances.

In this low-emissions scenario, land uplift slows the flow of ice from land to ocean, allowing more of the ice sheet to be preserved, the AAP reported. in a statement.

On the contrary, if humans fail to reduce carbon emissions in time, ice retreat will outpace uplift, drawing ocean water away from Antarctica and amplifying sea level rise. These events could significantly worsen the most dire patterns of projected sea level rise along populated coasts.

The AAP mission focused on studying the changing polar regions by collecting GPS and seismic data from a series of autonomous systems across Antarctica.

The researchers then ran a series of simulations to capture many possible evolutions of the Antarctic ice sheet and the extent of global sea level rise the Earth might experience through the year 2500, based on those parameters.