Scientists Worried As One Major Problem Could Be Putting Antarctica’s Largest Ice Shelf at Risk

Bordering the southern Weddell Sea, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf (FRIS) is Antarctica’s largest ice shelf after the Ross Ice Shelf. Its cold, dense, and salty waters gush upstream into the glacier, fringing the Antarctic ice sheet, often stippling the top layer with tiny bubbles or voids, that trap atmospheric gases. While the eastern end of the shelf is punctuated by the Pensacola Mountains, beneath its thick ice are carpets of colorful sponges and squatty creatures. However, lately, both the beauty and the function of this invaluable ice shelf are under threat.

A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans revealed that warm waters are seeping from the deep sea and spilling into FRIS. EOS Magazine reports that these warm water currents could dramatically escalate the rate of melting and hence, accelerate the already rising sea levels. "If the warm water reaches underneath the ice shelf, it would melt the base of the ice shelf," lead study author Nadine Steiger, a physical oceanographer at Sorbonne University in France, told Live Science. The main source of this warm water gushing towards FRIS is “provided by the Filchner Trough that intersects the shelf and connects the Filchner Ice Shelf with off-shelf waters,” the team noted in the study. 

To investigate the ice shelf, the team deployed an array of oceanographic instruments, an extensive network of moorings installed on the key sites along the inflow pathway, as well as several tagged seals from Weddell waters. Although they declared that the warm water seeping into FRIS could lead to its total collapse, experts say that there’s still plenty of time before this happens, most probably in an extreme climate change scenario, per the media channel. “This warm water may be a warning sign, but may also just be normal variability in the region. Either way, FRIS is unlikely to melt anytime soon,” Kaitlin Naughten, an ocean-ice modeler at the British Antarctic Survey who was not involved in the study said.

Naughten added that the ice shelf may see its doomsday in a century or two if climate change spirals out of control and the government fails to prevent the burning of fossil fuels. In a 2021 study, Naughten “estimated the FRIS tipping point would only be crossed when global warming exceeded 12.6 F (7 C) above pre-industrial levels.” According to EOS Magazine, researchers have previously observed warmer waters flowing on this ice shelf in 2013. They suggested that wind patterns drove the movement of this warm water. 2024 was the first year in which the temperature crossed 2.7 F. 

The team believes that studying these warm waters would illuminate further details about what exactly is driving them into the ice shelf and melting all the ice. The tweaking of the shelf's protective sheath is rapidly jeopardizing its stability. "We need to monitor the Filchner-Ronne for signs of change, but other regions of Antarctica will melt away long before this one does," Naughten said. "We are already observing rapid ice loss in West Antarctica, which is the fastest-growing contribution to sea level rise," she added. Elsewhere, scientists have predicted that a warming climate could trigger the collapse of FRIS by 2100.