Daily Episode 129 - "Fastest Glacier Collapse Ever Recorded"

Hey, Corey here.

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I mentioned a few episodes back that I was going to be on vacation and that there might

be a lapse in episodes.

I am back now.

I'm recording this on Saturday.

I had a couple of episodes sort of pre-recorded and ready to go for yesterday that did before,

so Monday and Tuesday.

So anyway, all of that's to say that this is the first episode that I have recorded

in over a week.

And while I was gone, it was actually the day that I left on vacation that the US attacked

I ran.

Now that's not what we're going to talk about today.

That's not the purpose of this episode.

But just in case you're wondering why is Cory not even brought this up yet, well, it's

because everything that you were hearing was recorded prior to that happening.

So I'll mention it here and I will do probably a full episode on this topic and potential

outcomes or consequences from all of this, but I'll just say how frustrating it is to

live in a time with such incompetent leadership in a time where it seems like there are no

plans and if there are plans, there are nefarious plans.

When it doesn't feel like anything that's being done is done for the common good or anybody's

good other than the president himself and his cabinet, it feels erratic.

It feels dangerous and it feels unstable.

And while politics doesn't run the entire world, doesn't change the outcome of everything,

that is to say with much better politics, it doesn't mean that we would necessarily have

a much better future, but it sure can have a negative effect and it can sure amplify

the issues that we're seeing.

The instability of our political structure here in the U.S. and we see this happening

throughout much of the world is I think a great danger to humanity and not just because

it's not responding to the climate crisis, though that is a major part of it and not

just because of the wars and the potential for geopolitical conflict, though that is

a major part of it.

I just get so disappointed by the level of tribalism, the amount of brainwashed that people

have become, the fact that they are willing to bow their heads and simply follow because

they have put their trust in a leader who truly could not care less about them, who would

throw each and every one of them under a bus if it meant getting just a little bit ahead

and he is doing that every day.

A world is run by corrupt politicians, bought out by pedophilic billionaires, thinking

not of what the world should be, not of what the world could be tomorrow, how we could

change it, how we could protect those who most need protecting, how to make things fair

and equal.

None of that.

I don't believe for an instant that that is on anyone's minds at the top.

It is how can we get away with the most, how can we protect ourselves, how can we lie

and get away with the things that we've already done and hope to get away with more later.

And all of the issues that the world faces, the true issues, the ones that we most need

leadership on get pushed to the side, trampled on, or even taken advantage of for the sake

of these people who have found themselves in charge.

Anyway, it has been frustrating to watch the news and just have this constant nagging

feeling and knowing that there's nothing I can do about it but sit and watch.

Well, I got to say there's plenty of things to talk about, new research that's come out,

things that have been broken in the news and all of that since this week that I've been

gone.

And so I'm going to touch on one of those today that was really interesting article about

a glacier collapse in Antarctica.

The date of release on this was the 26th of February, came out of the University of Colorado

at Boulder and it was about a glacier called Hectoria.

This is a relatively, and I also relatively small glacier, it doesn't mean it's small,

they said it's 120 square miles or so, if I look here 115 square miles, it says roughly

the size of Philadelphia, I don't know how big Philadelphia is, but okay.

But of a very interesting note here, I guess, is that the pace at which this glacier collapsed

made it the fastest collapse ever recorded.

This glacier had some like special circumstances, I guess, that allowed it to collapse this

fast, but they said it is not unique in that.

There are many glaciers in Antarctica with similar circumstances that may also collapse

at such a rate in the future.

And for ones that are much larger than Hectoria, which there are many that are much, much larger,

that could spell trouble for sea level rise and for cascading failure of ice in Antarctica

as the planet continues to heat up.

We'll be doing some other episodes soon, most likely, on the coming El Niño, the fact

that the chances for it happening are increasing, so it's becoming more likely, and the probability

is increasing that it is a anomalously large or damaging El Niño.

It looks like the temperature anomaly at which we could reach in this El Niño is growing.

And we'll know more as it gets closer and closer, but the probability keeps going up that

it's a going to happen and b that it's going to be more dramatic than expected.

But with that warming and with the stair step increase in new normals and temperature increases,

this is going to spell disaster for more glaciers like Hectoria saw.

So we're going to talk about this.

I'm just going to read through some of the research paper, we'll talk about what happened

and why.

So it says a glacier on Antarctica's eastern peninsula.

And by the way, Antarctica's eastern peninsula, which was supposed to be the most unaffected

area by climate change because eastern Antarctica was said to be, it was just, it was said

to be protected.

I remember in previous years on this podcast talking about how at one point all of Antarctica

was supposed to be relatively protected.

It wasn't going to be affected by climate change for many, many years.

And then it was, okay, well, West Antarctica, quates glacier and some of those areas are

definitely in danger.

Things are warming up in the western side, but on the eastern side, everything's chill.

We don't need to worry.

You know, it's so cold there, we're actually adding ice, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, this is on Antarctica's eastern peninsula, it says it underwent the most rapid retreat

seen in modern times in only two months, nearly half of Hectoria glacier broke apart and

disappeared.

New research led by the University of Colorado Boulder and published in nature geoscience

explains what happened in 2023 when the glacier lost about eight kilometers of ice in

just 60 days.

The study found that the key factor was the flat bedrock beneath the glacier.

As the ice thinned, this smooth foundation allowed large sections to lift off the ground

and float, triggering an unusual and sudden calving event.

Okay, so a few things to point out there just from the numbers.

First of all, this happened in 2023.

So this is between two and a half and three years old at this point.

The glacier lost it says half of its area, which was eight kilometers of ice.

Now, I'm not sure how wide of an area that would mean that it lost, you know, it went

eight kilometers deep, essentially, but how wide we know that it was half of the 115

square miles, you know, of the glacier itself.

It says the findings could help scientists pinpoint other Antarctic glaciers that might

be vulnerable to similar rapid collapse.

Victoria Glacier is relatively small by Antarctic standards, covering about 115 square

miles.

However, if a much larger glacier were to retreat this quickly, the consequences for global

sea level rise could be severe.

When we flew over Victoria in early 2024, I couldn't believe the vastness of the area

that had collapsed, said Naomi Achwat, lead author and series postdoctoral researcher.

I had seen the fjord and notable mountain features in the satellite images, but being

there in person filled me with astonishment at what had happened.

Achwat and her colleagues were initially studying the region for a different project.

They were investigating why sea ice detached from a glacier years after a nearby ice shelf

broke apart in 2002.

While reviewing satellite and remote sensing data, Achwat noticed something unexpected.

The images showed that Victoria Glacier had retreated dramatically within a short window

of time.

The discovery led her to focus on a pressing question, why did this glacier collapse so

quickly?

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One thing that I found interesting about this is, and this has come up, I feel like a few

times in a few different papers, they keep finding things by accident and it makes me realize

how I think in the past I just assumed that everything was being monitored all the time,

and if there was a collapse of an ice shelf, especially 115 square mile ice shelf, or if

one of the other things we talked about was off of the coast of Panama and the way that

the water behaves there, and all of these things that have been found by researchers who

kind of stumbled upon it while they were researching something else and then realized

that, hey, something might not be normal here, and so it just strikes me that there is

probably so much going on behind the scenes that we are not seen, that we have not heard

about, that we don't know about, because either researchers haven't come across it yet,

or they're just coming across it now and just beginning the research and that research

phase is always so long.

This happened in 2023 and we're just sort of hearing about it.

We didn't find out about it until at least a year later in 2024, there could be ice

shelves out there collapsing right now, there could be increases in methane, permafrost

melt, and any sort of cascading effect that's going on at this moment, but we may not even

hear about it for years, scientists may not find out about it for years, and yet the effects

that those things are having is constant.

The science always seems to be a few years behind, which in the past has not been a huge

deal because things moved and changed so slowly, but now with such a rapid advancement

and increase in the temperature and the effects of that, hearing about it so much later

is frustrating because it just gives this constant feeling that we don't know what's

happening now, and we won't know until possibly too late to react to many of it.

All right, I'll just do a quick explanation here from the paper based on talking about

why this glacier collapsed.

Basically it says many Antarctic glaciers are tidewater glaciers, meaning they sit on

the ocean floor and extend into the sea where they release icebergs.

The landscape beneath them can vary widely, some rest over deep troughs or underwater mountains

while others lie across broad flat plains.

Hectoria sat on what scientists call an ice plane, a flat stretch of bedrock below sea level.

Geological evidence shows that between 15,000 and 19,000 years ago, glaciers positioned

over similar ice planes retreated at extraordinary speeds, sometimes moving hundreds of meters

per day.

That historical insight helped researchers interpret what they're seeing at Hectoria.

When a tidewater glacier thins enough, it can lift off the seabed and begin floating

on the ocean's surface.

The location where it transitions from grounded to floating is known as the grounding line.

By analyzing multiple satellite datasets, the team identified several grounding lines

at Hectoria, a sign of ice plane conditions beneath the glacier.

As the glacier rested on a flat bed, large portions were able to lift off almost at once.

Once afloat, the ice was exposed to powerful ocean forces.

Cracks opened along the base of the glacier and eventually connected with fractures at the

surface.

This chain reaction caused extensive calving, breaking apart nearly half the glacier in

a matter of weeks.

By combining frequent satellite observations, the researchers reconstructed the sequence

of events in detail.

They said if we only had one image every three months, we might not be able to tell you

that the glacier lost two and a half kilometers in two days.

Combining these different satellites, we can fill in time gaps and confirm how quickly

the glacier lost ice.

Two and a half kilometers in two days, that is rapid.

Now, they talk about some other things that they did to confirm their research.

One interesting tidbit at the end, it says, Hectoria's retreat is a bit of a shock.

This kind of lightning fast retreat really changes what's possible for other larger glaciers

on the continent.

If the same conditions set up in some of the other areas, it could greatly speed up sea

level rise from the continent.

Sea level rise is one of those fun ones that I feel like we here talked about some and

I still refer back to the sort of expectations and numbers based on climate research and models

for how much sea level rise to expect by 2050 or by 2070 or by 2100.

It's one of those that's so frustrating because climate deniers look at it and they're

like, oh boy, okay, yeah, in 80 years, maybe we're going to see a foot of sea level rise

or two feet or whatever, you know, big whoop, it's their way of downplaying the overall

effects of climate change as if sea level rise was the only one or even the most important

one.

Now, of course, yes, it is epically important and they'll become even more important

as we find out more and more how much the models were off, right?

How much faster or worse than expected are these things happening?

We did not expect to lose East Antarctic ice shelves in the 2020s.

That was not on the model that guaranteed it.

So when the IPCC tells us that, you know, we can expect a meter of sea level by 2100 at

the high end, I think that maybe we can confidently say that we will be at least that amount,

right?

Probably much sooner.

The worst case outlier that the IPCC says they cannot rule out is a approximately 2 meter

rise by 2100 in a low confidence high impact scenario involving rapid Antarctic ice sheet

collapse.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into these numbers today.

I think there's still so much speculation in sea level rise and it's timing and how bad

it will hit.

It's obvious that the impacts of that would be disastrous.

If we're already experiencing mass migrations in the coming decades due to a destruction

of our normal food production, droughts and famines, you know, wet bulb and all these

different things, you can imagine how much worse it would be made by many cities becoming

uninhabitable due to frequent seawater incursion at high tides, swells during worsening storms

incursion into agricultural land.

Anyway, all these types of things could spell some real, real issues for the world in

the coming decades.

All right.

It's something we'll keep our eye on.

Sea level is one that I want to do an episode on soon, dig a little deeper into if there

has been any newer research with better updates, maybe those, especially that contradictor

or challenge the IPCC projections.

I know that these are extremely difficult models, so much complexity there to really be

able to say with confidence what to expect, but curious if the changes over the last decade

have led to others being able to say with confidence what they expect.

So we'll take a look at that here soon.

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Hey, Corey here.

If you are listening to the back catalog of breaking down collapse, thank you.

Those episodes are so vital.

They're so important.

But I also wanted to let you know that I am now doing daily episodes.

Yes, that's right.

Here on the podcast daily episode.

So if you are enjoying the back catalog, great.

Please also feel free to zoom forward to the most recent episodes.

Catch us daily.

They are quick little episodes and I think you'll enjoy them.

Thanks.