Fifty years ago, on this day, November 20, 1973, a researcher asked the question in the blog title.
1973 Is the west Antarctic ice sheet disintegrating? T Hughes, Journal of Geophysical Research. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JC078i033p07884
While there is no explicit mention of climate, it shows the ideas was around, and perhaps put the idea in Mercer’s head?
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was people had been looking at sea level rise for a while. They knew that the ice-caps were melting (different causes were being thrown around). The above article does not mentioned carbon dioxide buildup. It is just part of the general pattern of well, “the world’s getting warmer” and there are consequences for that…
What I think we can learn from this/what we should know.
The crucial thing is that while the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is sitting on bedrock, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is basically a lot of ice perched on mountain tops. So much less stable because warmer water can get underneath and loosen it.
What happened next
In 1978 John Mercer’s paper “West Antarctic ice sheet and C02 greenhouse effect: a threat of disaster” was published in Nature. It didn’t cite the Hughes 1973 paper, but it DID cite the following –
Hughes, T. 1975. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Instability, disintegration, and initiation of Ice Ages. Reviews of Geophysics, Volume13, Issue 4, Pages 502-526 https://doi.org/10.1029/RG013i004p00502
Btw, the answer to Hughes’ 1973 question has become an emphatic “hell yes.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.