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Global change

West-side story of Antarctic ice

Nature volume 458, pages 295–296 (2009)Cite this article

During the past five million years, the West Antarctic ice sheet has waxed and waned in size. A two-pronged reconstruction of that history provides clues to the ice sheet's future behaviour.

For human societies, the prospect of sea-level rise is probably the most serious long-term threat from unabated climate warming. Both the Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet are believed to be vulnerable to warming at the levels projected for the coming centuries. Sustaining those levels for many more centuries or millennia could ultimately cause the demise of both ice sheets — producing a worldwide rise in sea level of about 12 metres compared with today's levels, of which some 5 metres would derive from West Antarctica1.

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Figure 1: The West Antarctic ice sheet.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philippe Huybrechts is in the Earth System Sciences Group and the Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. phuybrec@vub.ac.be,

    Philippe Huybrechts

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  1. Philippe Huybrechts
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Huybrechts, P. West-side story of Antarctic ice. Nature 458, 295–296 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458295a

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