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Reassurance after ice breakaway in Antarctic
THE collapse of an ice shelf the size of Cyprus does not mean the entire Western Antarctic ice sheet is about to collapse, a reinsurance researcher has said.The break up of the Larsen B ice shelf yesterday provoked intense interest and speculation all over the world over whether it is a sign that the entire Western Antarctic ice sheet is about to collapse, sparking a massive rise in sea level.
Professor Peter Sammonds is an associate of reinsurance broker Benfield’s hazard research centre, at University College London, where he researches a variety of natural phenomena, but specialises in ice shelves.
He explained that the Antarctic peninsula is said to be divided into two distinct ice sheets. The eastern one is continental, but as the western one is marine ie grounded below sea level it is seen as much more vulnerable to climate change.
Asked whether it was likely to completely collapse, Professor Sammonds said: "There’s a very small chance that it might happen. Certainly it will happen in the millennium to come. But the chance of it happening in next 20 years is virtually zero and the chance in the next 200 years is actually fairly small."
He said that, as summer atmospheric temperatures have got warmer and the zero degree isotherm has moved southwards across the Antarctic peninsula, the break up of the smaller ice shelves has speeded up. But he said it was impossible to say whether this particular break-up was the result of this, or of an ongoing, regular process.
He went on to say that Larsen B is not that significant in relation to the overall size of the Antarctic, and added that there are two much bigger ice shelves further south that are the size of France.
"It’s obviously the vulnerability of those ice shelves which is a key question, but they are so much further south; they’re not really being affected by this process because it’s much colder and they’re much bigger as a whole," he said.
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