The Antarctic is Melting

You know that scene in The Day After Tomorrow where a huge tidal wave hits New York? Well, we may be moving closer to that, and the primary cause may be the continued melting of the Antarctic.

According to a recent report in the Christian Science Monitor, ice shelves floating in the waters off Antarctica are apparently thinning. Which may not sound like much in itself, but those shelves are what slow the speed with which the continent’s inland glaciers are sliding into the sea. If those shelves go, the rate of glacier advance would increase tremendously.

Right now, according to the Monitor, Antarctic melting is responsible for about 10 percent of the annual 1.8mm rise in the world’s oceans. If the ice shelves disappear, the glacier advance could mean as much as a one-metre rise in water levels around the globe, and humanity could be swimming with the fishes.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Under-reported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.