REM: Antarctic ice melt barriers disappearing twice as fast

Undersea anchors of ice that help prevent Antarctica’s land ice from slipping into the ocean are shrinking at more than twice the rate compared with 50 years ago, research shows.

Experts from the University of Edinburgh reveal that over a third of these frozen anchors, known as pinning points, have diminished since the early 2000s.

The decline in pinning points, responsible for securing the floating ice sheets that support Antarctica's land ice, could expedite the continent's contribution to rising sea levels, caution scientists. This discovery stems from a novel study tracking changes in Antarctic ice shelf thickness dating back to 1973, utilising satellite imagery from the NASA/United States Geological Survey Landsat programme.

Pinning points materialise when sections of a floating ice sheet fasten to elevated points on the ocean floor, creating discernible protrusions on the otherwise smooth ice shelf surface. By observing alterations in these features, researchers gauged fluctuations in ice shelf thickness across three intervals: 1973 to 1989, 1990 to 2000 and 2000 to 2022.