Antarctic ice sheet faces “death by a thousand cuts”

Arecent study conducted by University of Florida geologists and geographers has shed new light on the effects of climate change on Antarctic ice shelves. It found that while there has been broad ice shelf loss due to warming temperatures, the frequency and size of major iceberg calving events has not changed significantly.

This study was led by Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences Emma MacKie, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor of Geography Katy Serafin, Ph.D., along with a collaborator at the Colorado School of Mines.

“Our results suggest that the primary threat to our ice shelves is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ via small calving events, rather than catastrophic extremes,” said MacKie.

Calving, when chunks of ice break off from ice shelves to form icebergs, is common and increasingly influenced by climate change. For extremely large icebergs, this process is typically slow, often starting with small rifts that spread across the ice shelf before fully breaking off.