Focus at Four: Large number of Antarctic ice shelves shrinking
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – According to a recently released study, four dozen Antarctic ice shelves have shrunk since 1997, losing 30 percent of their ice and 28 of those have lost more than half.
Texas A&M professor Alex Orsi with the Department of Oceanography joined First News at Four on Friday to discuss the shrinkage.
Orsi said the ice shelves are holding back ice from the continent of Antarctica and if they continue to break down they can’t hold back as much as they have in the past.
“Ice from the continent will be dropping into the ocean which has a wide range of connotations,” Orsi said. “Number one is sea level rise, global sea level rise. That water is also pure water, so it’s not salty so it would freshen up the surface of the ocean which has connotations we would see ice formations, biology, ecology and many other things.”
The continent has 162 ice shelves total and while the study shows 68 have “significantly” shrunk, 29 grew. Orsi said the situation is a “long link” to global warming.
“It’s all about the health of those shelves, the shelves have a natural cycle that is more than 25 years,” Orsi said. “These ice shelves grow and break down on a natural process it just happens that the two biggest ice shelves in the world are in Antarctica and they do have growth, show growth and every once and then we have this breakup.”
Instead of focusing on the large ice shelves in Antarctica, Orsi said the study focuses on the smaller ones which have shown larger decay.
“The shrinkage happens because of the breakage of the edge, but also by reusing the thickness of that ice shelf because of the interaction with the ocean that sneaks underneath and that has been the main reason in most of these ice shelves, something that hasn’t been taken into account,” Orsi said.
