Octopuses found in different areas in Antarctica revealed a disturbing past and a scary future for the continent. The octopuses from a geographically separated population were once part of a big family, suggesting that a massive sheet collapsed, separating them.
Octopus DNA Reveals History, Future of Antarctica
Two separate populations of Turquet's octopus (Pareledone turqueti) in the ocean bays encircle West Antarctica. Their forefathers' shared secrets may not portend well for the planet's long-term health.
Before peer review, a recent DNA investigation of the two geographically distinct octopus populations revealed that they originally belonged to the same extended family.
This "direct historical connection" implies that the enormous 2.2 million cubic kilometers (530,000 cubic miles) West Antarctic ice sheet that divides the two bays had disintegrated entirely into the water some 125,000 years ago, ScienceAlert reported.
Approximately 70,000 years ago, researchers who sequenced the genomes of octopus populations in the Weddell and Ross Seas discovered evidence of ancient gene flow between the two groups. The finding implies that an ancient seaway once existed that directly connected the present-day Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea.
The researchers stated that only a total collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during an interglacial period, which they infer to have occurred roughly between 68 and 265 [thousand years ago], could have made this possible.
If that did happen back then, it might happen again now that the world's temperatures are approaching a comparable threshold.
Whether West Antarctica is in danger of completely collapsing due to the climate crisis is currently unknown to scientists. It's one of the biggest uncertainties in climate models that must be resolved.
While some experts issued dire warnings about the area as recently as 50 years ago, other climate models created just ten years ago anticipated that Antarctica would not experience appreciable ice loss during the next century.
Ice Shelf Collapse in Antarctica
In Antarctica, ice shelves frequently give birth to icebergs. An ice shelf's total collapse is less frequent. However, a shelf of ice in East Antarctica did both in March 2022. Whereas coastal glacial ice was long believed to be stable, the collapse has altered a portion of the Antarctic terrain, according to NASA Earth Observatory.
The transformation was rapid. The floating shelf nourished by the Glenzer and Conger glaciers was still standing at the beginning of March 2022. It had crumbled by the middle of the month. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured the shelf before and after it dissolved.
According to Christopher Shuman, a glaciologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the entire shelf collapsed in just two weeks. Within weeks, the glacial shelf ice and nearby sea ice remnants scattered from the waters near Bowman Island. All of this was completed in under a month. It was a major blowout.
One of its glaciers is called the "Doomsday Glacier" because, in the event of its collapse, the sea level may increase by 65 millimeters. Recently, climate experts warned that the glacier was barely hanging on.
The natural cycle of Earth's climate was what caused the last collapse. It wasn't brought on by rapid global warming, which today's climate scientists attribute to human emissions of fossil fuels amid a period of supposed planetary cooling.
It is difficult to imagine the environmental catastrophe if the entire West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed due to human-caused global warming and formed an archipelago in the southern seas.
According to scientists, sea levels might rise by 3.3 to 5 meters (11 to 17 feet) worldwide, radically altering continents' coastlines and upending the global water cycle.
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