One of the most stable glaciers in Antarctica, the Cadman Glacier, has suddenly started to melt, after having not seen substantial melting for decades. The data, published in the journal Nature Communications, indicate that in the period between November 2018 and December 2019 the glacier retreated by 8 kilometers and thinned by 20 meters, due to a 400 meter deep channel that allowed ocean water , unusually warm, to reach the glacier. The research is coordinated by Benjamin Wallis, of the University of Leeds and conducted in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey.
Not all regions of Antarctica are reacting in the same way to global warming: many glaciers in the eastern regions have been rapidly melting for years, while the western ones are showing greater stability. One of these was until recently the Cadman Glacier, but new data indicates that from November 2018 to December 2019 it lost 2.16 billion tonnes of ice.
The cause of this sudden change would have been due to the collapse of a sort of ice buttress which from the seabed contained the sliding of the entire glacier towards the sea. The increasingly warm waters would have weakened the base, which collapsed in 2018. According to the authors of the study, the Cadman Glacier is now in a state of ‘dynamic imbalance’.
“What this research indicates – said Michael Meredith, of the British Antarctic Survey and one of the authors of the study – is that apparently stable glaciers can change very rapidly, becoming unstable almost without warning, and then thinning and retreating very quickly”. The glaciers of the western regions have been protected so far, researchers hypothesize, by underwater mountain ridges, which limited the arrival of warm water currents, but the further increase in temperatures is increasingly limiting this protective effect.
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