We have been trying to decipher how 1950 the Antarctica would be like. We just discovered it

We have always seen the earth in the same way: Green and Brown Earth masses and the poles contrasting in white. Logical, because it has been tens of thousands of years covered by that white command, but the funny thing is that we have been trying to unravel What would Antarctica be like without ice.

And we just discovered it in what is a curious and bleak view that could be the future of the earth.

Decades melting Antarctica. Making Antarctica is not just a matter of curiosity. It is also key to predicting ice loss and sea level elevation. It is something that has studied Since 1950, but in 1996 the culminating moment came: the creation of the Bedmap consortium.

With European support, many measurements and the most avant -garde technology at that time, the researchers marked the goal of creating a complete map of Antarctica. That came a few years later, with the Bedmap1 published in 2001.

Methods. It is what allowed us to know the average elevation of the rock base of Antarctica, the distribution of ice and its volume. Bedmap1 gave us a vision of that scenario with a resolution of five kilometers. In 2013 Bedmap2 appeared, for which they used ten times more measurements than the first and with a superior resolution.

For the analysis, the researchers gathered data thanks to airplanes that fly over the area by sending radio pulses that allow measuring both the ice thickness and the most interesting: the depth of the rock bed. Crossing the data of these radars, batimetric data, satellite information and seismic studies, we can have that radiography of Antarctica.

To the third is the defeated. And the most accurate so far is the one that crowns this article: Bedmap3. This is the result of the study of more than 82 million data points – some times more than those taken into account to elaborate Bedmap2 – and, as explained from British antarctic surveyit is as if they had removed the 27 million cubic kilometers of ice that cover the territory.

In this new analysis, we see the most hidden places of the great mountains, but also details of the deepest cannons. Bedmap 2 already had a great level of detail, but this third map reveals is more depth in some areas. For example, where is the thickest layer of ice. It has been identified in an unnamed cannon in Wilkes, where the ice has a whopping 4,757 meters thick.

Fascinating. The resolution of this third attempt is 500 meters and, as we say, is the result of 70 years of measurements that have combined to give life to the new map.

It is what allows researchers to be more precise when having place statistics:

• Total ice volume in Antarcticaincluding ice platforms: 27.17 million km³. In Bedmap1, the calculation was 25.34 million km³. In Bedman2, 26.54 million km³.
• Total ice surface in Antarcticaincluding ice platforms: 13.63 million km²
• Ice thickness in Antarcticaincluding ice platforms: 1,948 m (excluding ice platforms: 2,148 m)
• Potential increase in sea level globally if all ice melts: 58 meters.

And scary. That last value, the potential increase in sea level, is one of the main utilities of this type of research. It has not varied in the three attempts to map Antarctica and, as one of the researchers of the Bedmap project points out, the utility goes beyond the simple objective of satisfying curiosity.

With the new data, Peter Fretwell comments that “it is evident that the Antarctic ice layer is thicker than we originally realized and has a greater volume of ice.

It is also buried in a layer of rock located under sea level and is something that exposes ice at a greater risk of melting due to the incursion of warm water of the ocean. It is something that is taking place on the banks of the continent and what Bedmap3 shows us is that we have a slightly more vulnerable Antarctica than we thought. ”

Precisely there is the disturbing. If the average temperature continues to increase, Bedmap3 may go from being a simple map to a prediction of the future of the earth. By the way, if you want to toys with Bedmap3, you have it in This link.

Images | Bedmap, Bas

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