Sea Change – If a Massive Ocean Rise Were to Happen Quickly

   

If Hollywood were still making disaster movies, this could be a doozy. It all starts with what you don’t see, except some nerdy scientists waving their hands frantically, holding a folder with a sheaf of documents, calculations and photographs, warning us about a climatic apocalypse about to assault the Earth. Oh… we’ve seen that one… a while ago. Or maybe it’s a massive volcano shuddering with a growling furor, a Yellowstone level super-volcano capable of taking out a large chunk of the western United States. Oh, no well-armed green aliens with expansion and finding new food sources on their minds.

So, it would be even more boring if there were a giant under-ice river, way beneath the massive Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica (about the size of Florida, also known as the Doomsday Glacier), one you really cannot see because it is miles under that frigid continent. But what if some pretty credible scientists were telling you that this river of oceanic water… far, far below the surface of that glacier… was subjecting that massive body of ice to “vigorous melting”? And what if that “vigorous melting” – discovered only by use of some sophisticated radar data from space to perform an X-ray of the crucial glacier – was providing information that this Florida-sized piece of ice would, sooner rather than later, find its way into the ocean itself? If you don’t live in a coastal community, you might not care. If you’re Ron DeSantis, you should care but don’t.

Laura Paddison, writing for CNN News on May 22nd, dug a little deeper into this study released on May 20th by the Proceeding of the National Academy Sciences: “Thwaites, which already contributes 4% to global sea level rise, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts as a natural dam to the surrounding ice in West Antarctica, scientists have estimated its complete collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise — a catastrophe for the world’s coastal communities…

“Many studies have pointed to the immense vulnerabilities of Thwaites. Global warming, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, has left it hanging on ‘by its fingernails,’ according to a 2022 study… This latest research adds a new and alarming factor into projections of its fate.

“A team of glaciologists — led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine — used high resolution satellite radar data, collected between March and June last year, to create an X-ray of the glacier. This allowed them to build a picture of changes to Thwaites’ ‘grounding line,’ the point at which the glacier rises from the seabed and becomes a floating ice shelf. Grounding lines are vital to the stability of ice sheets, and a key point of vulnerability for Thwaites, but have been difficult to study.

“‘In the past, we had only sporadic data to look at this,’ said Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California at Irvine and a co-author on the study. ‘In this new data set, which is daily and over several months, we have solid observations of what is going on.’… They observed seawater pushing beneath the glacier over many miles, and then moving out again, following the daily rhythm of the tides. When the water flows in, it’s enough to ‘jack up’ the surface of the glacier by centimeters, Rignot told CNN… He suggested the term ‘grounding zone’ may be more apt than grounding line, as it can move nearly 4 miles over a 12-hour tidal cycle, according to their research.

“The speed of the seawater, which moves considerable distances over a short time period, increases glacier melt because as soon as the ice melts, freshwater is washed out and replaced with warmer seawater, Rignot said… ‘This process of widespread, enormous seawater intrusion will increase the projections of sea level rise from Antarctica,’ he added.” These “sea rises” are already here, and projections show serious impacts on a vast number of people, all over the world.

“With 600 million people living on coastlines less than 10 metres (32 ft) above sea level, even a steady rise in sea levels means leaving whole populations, homes, and infrastructure to the whims of the sea… Under the worst-case scenario examined in the study, some 287 million people - 4 percent of the world's population - could be impacted by coastal flooding.

“For those more inclined to think in dollars, this scenario threatens coastal assets worth roughly US$14 trillion, or 20 percent of the global GDP… Interestingly enough, most of that is from tide and storm events, which are creeping further inland and getting stirred up by climate change. Only 32 percent is projected from regional sea level rise specifically.

“‘Even though average sea levels rise relatively slowly, we found that these other flooding risks like high tides, storm surge and breaking waves will become much more frequent and more intense,’ infrastructure engineer Ebru Kirezci, also from the University of Melbourne, told The New York Times.” Carly Cassella for the July 31, 2020 ScienceAlert. But Ms Cassella’s numbers did not include the possible impact of the Thwaites Glacier. And that makes the 32% sea rise mentioned above woefully inadequate. Add to this assemblage of data the very real possibility of a sudden massive and sequential collapse of that Doomsday Glacier into the ocean and releasing pent up ice previously held back, and that disaster movie morphs into reality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are millions of Americans who believe battling climate change, if it even exists, is a colossal waste of money, a real job killing effort at a marginal risk, and intend to support leader who share that mishappen belief.