蓝莓视频

For eight days straight, researcher Christine Dow and her team dragged a sled-mounted radar system roughly 85 kilometres across the frozen Antarctic. The hard-earned data they collected, added to numerical model outputs produced by Dow and her team, has her听convinced the Antarctic Ice Sheet is destabilizing faster than anyone thought.

鈥淚t鈥檚 scary,鈥� says the Scotland-born Canada Research Chair in Glacier Hydrology and Ice Dynamics at the University of 蓝莓视频. 鈥淭he West Antarctic was predicted to take more than 1,000 years to collapse. Now, we鈥檙e talking a few hundred years.鈥�

Understanding the danger posed by melting polar regions takes a combination of physics knowledge, computational chops and a heavy dose of imagination. Dow does the work not everyone is prepared to do. She travels to the coldest places on earth collecting raw data and modelling that information to understand how the subglacial hydrological and ice-ocean systems evolve as a result of climate change.

The familiar shape of the Antarctic we鈥檝e seen on maps since childhood betrays the landmass beneath. 鈥淭he landmass is in the middle of the Antarctic. Massive ice shelves cling to its edge holding back the ice on land. If those shelves go, that land ice accelerates into the ocean,鈥� Dow says.

Her radar sled uncovers information deep below the ice shelves听to paint a picture of how warming ocean water is eroding that anchor ice and cleaving ice shelves at an accelerated rate, which significantly raises sea levels.

鈥淏ecause we鈥檝e only recently had the computing power to run these kinds of models, and we鈥檙e still making these new discoveries about ice shelves, the more we find out, the more unstable the whole system seems to be,鈥� Dow says. 鈥淚s this going to collapse in the next 200 years? It might.鈥�

This threat of collapse has attracted climate researchers from around the world to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The area is experiencing an uncanny confluence of climate-related changes. 鈥淭he data we鈥檙e gathering isn鈥檛 about whether it鈥檚 collapsing, it鈥檚 how fast,鈥� Dow adds.

In 2018, the world jolted awake to the dangers of climate change when the (IPCC) released its report giving us a 12-year timetable to avoid irreversible climate impacts.

That timetable might be optimistic.

鈥淲e鈥檙e gaining new information all the time so the IPCC estimates are likely to get even more serious over time both due to the reducing timetable and our increased knowledge,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he worst case we鈥檙e modelling is more than 12 metres sea level rise globally over the next few hundred years. That鈥檚 total devastation of the planet.鈥�

Dow is a scientist first and foremost. She joined the University of 蓝莓视频 from a previous position with NASA, but knowing what she knows has left her no choice but to be an advocate as well.

鈥淚magine having to relocate every person living in a coastal city in 100 years,鈥� she explains. 鈥淪ea-level rise means salt water infiltrating our ground water. It means climate refugees.鈥�

Dow stresses that all climate scientists need to do a better job communicating the danger and seeking partnerships with industry. 鈥淲e face a lot of challenges accessing technology like satellite systems for real-time data collection and equipment that can survive the extreme conditions of Polar regions. Partnerships between industry and science are one of the best ways we can tackle these problems quickly and get answers to questions that will impact everyone around the globe.鈥�

鈥淚 am hesitant to say it鈥檚 this or that many years, but if it鈥檚 not already too late it will be soon if we don鈥檛 act. Regardless, we can be certain that everything is going to change.鈥�