New Data on Lessened Antarctic Ice Melt, Have “Shrunk the Monster” of Global Warming

(p. A6) Deploying an underwater robot beneath a rapidly melting ice shelf in Antarctica, scientists have uncovered new clues about how it is melting. The findings will help assess the threat it and other ice shelves pose for long-term sea-level rise.

The researchers said that overall melting of the underside of part of the Thwaites shelf in West Antarctica was less than expected from estimates derived from computer models.

. . .

Ted Scambos, a senior researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the new findings, and other recent work on the Thwaites, suggest that although many uncertainties remain, the worst-case scenario for the ice shelf, at least this century, “is a little less worse than it used to be.”

“We’ve kind of shrunk the monster a little bit,” said Dr. Scambos, who is part of the Thwaites effort but was not directly involved in this research.

The new findings were in two papers in Nature: Dr. Davis was the lead author of one, and Britney E. Schmidt, a geophysicist at Cornell University, was the lead author of the other.

For the full story, see:

Henry Fountain. “Scientists Get Close Look Beneath a Giant Ice Shelf Melting Near Antarctica.” The New York Times (Thursday, February 16, 2023): A6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 15, 2023, and has the title “Scientists Get a Close-Up Look Beneath a Troubling Ice Shelf in Antarctica.” The version quoted above omits a sentence that appears in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

The two academic articles in Nature reporting the lessened Antarctic ice melting, are:

Davis, Peter E. D., Keith W. Nicholls, David M. Holland, Britney E. Schmidt, Peter Washam, Kiya L. Riverman, Robert J. Arthern, Irena Vaňková, Clare Eayrs, James A. Smith, Paul G. D. Anker, Andrew D. Mullen, Daniel Dichek, Justin D. Lawrence, Matthew M. Meister, Elisabeth Clyne, Aurora Basinski-Ferris, Eric Rignot, Bastien Y. Queste, Lars Boehme, Karen J. Heywood, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, and Keith Makinson. “Suppressed Basal Melting in the Eastern Thwaites Glacier Grounding Zone.” Nature 614, no. 7948 (Feb. 16, 2023): 479-85.

Schmidt, B. E., P. Washam, P. E. D. Davis, K. W. Nicholls, D. M. Holland, J. D. Lawrence, K. L. Riverman, J. A. Smith, A. Spears, D. J. G. Dichek, A. D. Mullen, E. Clyne, B. Yeager, P. Anker, M. R. Meister, B. C. Hurwitz, E. S. Quartini, F. E. Bryson, A. Basinski-Ferris, C. Thomas, J. Wake, D. G. Vaughan, S. Anandakrishnan, E. Rignot, J. Paden, and K. Makinson. “Heterogeneous Melting near the Thwaites Glacier Grounding Line.” Nature 614, no. 7948 (Feb. 16, 2023): 471-78.