'Sleeping giant' glacier may lift seas two metres: study
Source: yahoo new
Paris (AFP) - A rapidly melting glacier atop East Antarctica is on track to lift oceans at least two metres, and could soon pass a "tipping point" of no return, researchers said Wednesday.
To date, scientists have mostly worried about the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets as dangerous drivers of sea level rise.
But the new study, following up on earlier work by the same team, has identified a third major threat to hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world.
"I predict that before the end of the century the great global cities of our planet near the sea will have two- or three-metre (6.5 - 10 feet) high sea defences all around them," said Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute and Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, and the study's senior author.
From the air, the contours of Totten Glacier -- roughly the size of France -- are invisible because the entire Antarctic continent is covered by a seamless, kilometres-thick blanket of snow and ice.
Geologically, however, it is a distinct -- and volatile -- beast.
- Disintegration accelerating -
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/sleeping-giant-glacier-may-lift-seas-two-metres-231721809.html?nhp=1
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