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Scientists have found evidence that between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago, in a period termed mid-Holocene, the East Antarctic ice sheet in Queen Maud Land melted rapidly during the time when the world experienced warmer-than-present summers. They said that this ice sheet sector in East Antarctica was thinner following the end of the last ice age, when massive ice sheets previously covered North America, northern Europe and southern South America. When these ice sheets melted, they raised the sea level by more than 100 metres. For context, if absolutely all of Antarctica's present day ice melted, the seas would rise by 58 metres on average. Sixty per cent of the world's fresh water is bound up in Antarctic ice sheets. "The ice sheet in East Antarctica stores enormous amounts of water. This means that this is the biggest possible source of future sea level rise - up to 53 metres if all of the East Antarctic ice melts - and is seen as the largest source of uncertainties in the future sea
Widespread cracks and crevasses were revealed in observations beneath the floating shelf of the vulnerable Thwaites Glacier of the Antarctic, where melting occurs more rapidly, contributing to its retreat and potentially to sea-level rise, according to a new study. The first-of-their-kind observations of the Florida-sized glacier was obtained by deploying the remotely operated Icefin underwater robot through a nearly 2,000-foot-deep borehole drilled in the ice, the study said. The research team from Cornell University, US, and international collaborators, captured the first close-up views of the critical point near the grounding line where Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica - one of the continent's fastest changing and most unstable glaciers - meets the Amundsen Sea, the study said. From that area, the researchers concluded that Thwaites has retreated smoothly and steadily up the ocean floor since at least 2011. They found that flat sections covering much of the ice shelf's bas