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Researchers from the University of Tasmania urge a multinational effort to study Australia's Antarctic territory, revealing that the poorly explored Wilkes Subglacial Basin may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously believed, with potential to raise global sea levels by three to four metres.
Scientists are calling for a multi-national, co-ordinated effort to figure out how this area could affect everything on Earth. Researchers from the University of Tasmania are urging greater study of Australia's Antarctic territory, one of the least explored regions on the planet.
Very little is known about East Antarctica's Wilkes Subglacial Basin, which lies within Australian territory. With enough ice to raise sea levels three to four metres, scientists say research is needed to understand the region's health. Australian scientists are sounding the alarm that vast tracts of the Antarctic are drastically understudied and could disrupt the global system if they collapsed.
Research released on Wednesday by the University of Tasmania reveals that the Wilkes Subglacial Basin could be far more exposed to climate change than previously thought. The WSB lies in East Antarctica, a region thought to be considerably more stable and less at risk of a warming planet than its western counterpart.
However, researchers say that a substantial, multinational research project is needed to understand the risks of the deterioration of the region. Professor Matt King, chief investigator at the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, said a lack of research means scientists cannot predict how rapidly change could occur, or at what level global greenhouse gas emissions could trigger runaway ice-sheet collapse.
"The Wilkes Subglacial Basin is arguably the last unexplored place in Antarctica," King said. "It's actually hard for us to find a living scientist who's actually ever been there, and yet ... it holds significant climate risks for our region and the planet. "Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
No ship has ever come within 150km of the front of one of the area's key glaciers, the Cook Glacier, and there is no in situ mapping data of the ocean floor. Without better data, researchers say it is extremely difficult to know what the impact of warming might be.
"We've assembled 28 leading international researchers across 14 countries to summarise the state of the art of what we know in this area and to call for a coordinated multi-year, multinational program of activity in this area to understand the risk much better than we do now," King said. At approximately 400km across and 1,400km deep into the East Antarctic interior, the WSB is roughly half the size of NSW.
With 4km-thick ice, there is enough frozen water in it to raise global sea levels three to four metres. For much of the twentieth century, scientists believed that major changes to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were unlikely under short-term global warming scenarios, as much of the ice sits on bedrock, unlike the far more fragile western sheet, which is more situated on water.
However, the discovery of three large regions in the east where the ice has an ocean foundation means this area could be just as vulnerable to warming seas as better understood regions.
"As the ice melts increasingly because of a warming climate, there will be more and more ocean in contact with the ice," King said. Scientists warn that current warming levels are pushing the Antarctic toward self-sustaining collapse trajectories, which could play out rapidly or across centuries.
Source: Supplied / Australian Antarctic Division / Pete Harmsen Greater contact with a warmer ocean means faster melting from beneath, which could cause a "runaway retreat" of the ice sheet, potentially resulting in hundreds of kilometres of melted ice over hundreds of years.
"The Wilkes Subglacial Basin has exactly the same vulnerability as those more famous glaciers that have received many years of intensive study," King added. The impact of melting ice goes beyond sea level rise. While scientists do not think the region is likely to see major collapse before the end of the century, melting Antarctic ice can "disrupt the entire global climate system", King said.
"Antarctica drives, or contributes to driving, the global climate system in the ocean, which affects everyone's weather, life, and the ocean nutrients. " Professor Nancy Bertler from Victoria University of Wellington and Earth Sciences New Zealand, who contributed to the research, said that few scientists would previously have considered that East Antarctica, which is "so much bigger, so much colder, so much thicker, in a cooler atmosphere", "would be affected in our lifetimes".
"It's really been less than a decade that we realised that the changes we observe in East Antarctica are well ahead of what any of us expected," she said. announced earlier this month that global temperature rise is likely to pass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels"within the next few years" Present best-case scenarios — which would still require sustained, plunging greenhouse gas emission reductions — are likely to see global temperature rise peak at 1.8C. While scientists are uncertain exactly how such temperature increases will affect Antarctica, they note that the mid-Pliocene — a geological period between 3.3 million and three million years ago — was 2-3.5C higher than pre-industrial levels and sea levels were six to 23 metres higher than today.
The major focus of Antarctic research has been on the less stable Western ice sheet, home to "doomsday" glaciers like Thwaites and Pine Island. Source: Supplied / French Polar Institute Paul-Émile Victor / Marcelline Pean For much of the pre-industrial period, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were at 280 parts per million. During the mid-Pliocene, CO2 was between 365 and 415 parts per million.
"We are now at 426 parts per million, so we are at even higher CO2 than we observed in the Pliocene," Bertler said. "There are some really big concerns... with the mid-Pliocene example, that resembles very closely the conditions that we are heading to, this area has the potential to really change very significantly.
"Researchers say that a vast, multimillion-dollar project will need to be launched to study the East Antarctic ice sheet, similar to the one launched when the fragility of the West Antarctic ice sheet was discovered. Bertler said the money required to fund the project pales in comparison to the estimated $800 billion in assets currently exposed to projected sea-level rise this century.
Professor Andrew Mackintosh from the Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future program and Monash University, who also contributed to the research, said that ice-breaker ships and a vast array of technical monitoring equipment will need to be deployed to the region.
"I'd love to see us as a nation go back to do this in a coordinated manner with many partners," he said, noting that the project will require a "five-to-10-year window" but that there is plenty to do now. King added that the "terrifying thing" about the Antarctic ice sheet is that it "responds over very long timescales".
However, he noted the slow-moving nature of change also offers an advantage in preparation time.
"While we have seen some dramatic change , it hasn't been yet to the extent that we've seen in West Antarctica," he said. "That, of course, is a good thing because it means it's not too late to understand the system before it gets underway. "If we want to provide good and timely advice to policymakers, now is the right time to be in there rather than waiting for it to all of a sudden start to thin dramatically.
" While countries around the world have been retreating from their climate pledges, Bertler said that although gaps in the data exist, scientists "absolutely know enough to really advocate for zero emissions". "We have to come down to net zero emissions," she said. "We are at a place where that is non-negotiable anymore". Sign up now for daily news from Australia and around the world.
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