The Totten ice shelf, Antarctica, where scientists have discovered warm water flowing through a deep channel under East Antarctica’s largest glacier, driving rapid melting.

(Esmee van Wijke/ACE CRC)

At a Glance

An 11-foot rise in the global sea level could have massive consequences worldwide.In the United States alone, millions of people living in low-lying coastal areas would be impacted.

Warm water flowing through a deep channel under East Antarctica’s largest glacier is driving rapid melting, which could lead to a significant rise in global sea levels, a new report says.

According to a study, a team of Australian scientists discovered that rapid melting of a massive ice shelf in east Antarctica is leading to the thinning of the ice front. Should the thinning continue and the massive shelf give way, enough ice would slide into the sea to raise global levels by over 11 feet, the scientists say.

The global sea level continues to rise as a result of thermal expansion and glacial melting and many believe it will be a snowball effect in the years to come.

Scientists have become accustomed to glacier melts in Greenland, as well as the melting of the ice sheet in western Antarctica, but now scientists have confirmed the eastern part of the Antarctica ice sheet is undergoing significant melting, as well.

Oceanographer and lead author of the study, Stephen Rich Rintoul of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, led his team on a treacherous expedition to collect oceanographic data from the Totten ice shelf in east Antarctica. They discovered that the shelf and other glaciers were experiencing basal melt, where ice begins to melt from the bottom layer of ice.

An ice shelf is a portion of ice that extends beyond the land over the sea. In Antarctica, the ice sheets are so massive that should they melt or break off, it would cause globalsea levels to rise considerably, according to the scientists.

Totten Glacier calving front, 2014

(Paul Brown/ACE CRC)

The team discovered a 6-mile-wide trough about 2,000 feet down worn into the side of the Totten shelf. Within that trough lies two channels of warm, running water flowing through, melting the surrounding ice as it moves along.

The scientist found that the iceis melting at its base faster than all other ice shelves of similar size in East Antarctica.

“We knew from satellite data that the Totten has been thinning faster than other glaciers in East Antarctica, but we didn’t know why,” Rintoul from the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC). “A lucky break in the sea ice allowed us to get the ship in there and take the first measurements of the water column and sea floor in this area. We found that warm ocean water is reaching the ice shelf through this channel, with temperatures high enough to drive rapid melt of the underside of the ice shelf."

Rintoul said the finding is important because "the ice shelf acts as a sort of plug that restricts the flow of ice from Antarctica to the ocean.”

An 11-foot rise in the global sea level could have massive consequences worldwide. In the United States alone, millions of people living in low-lying coastal areas would be impacted.

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According to a based on data from 2012, a 10-foot rise in sea levels would mean a loss of 28,800 square miles of land in the U.S. alone, home to 12.3 million people.More than half of the area of 40 large cities, including New York City, Virginia Beach and Miami, is less than 10 feet above the high-tide line.

"Twenty-seven of the cities are in Florida, where one-third of all current housing sits below the critical line — including 85 percent in Miami-Dade and Broward counties," the report notes.

It's unclear how this latest finding might play out in the future, the scientists say, but they fear that despite any continuing efforts to slow the effects of climate change, it may be too late, noting that ice sheets that mightbreak off 10 years from now, may be the consequence of melting that began a decade ago.

The scientists say it is important to continue to study the ice sheets to better understand the effects of climate change.

“If warm ocean waters drive more rapid melt of the Totten and other ice shelves around the edge of Antarctica, more glacial ice can flow into the ocean, raising sea level,” Rintoul said. “The Totten is the largest glacier in East Antarctica, and it contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 3.5 meters (11 feet) if it all melted, so it is important to know how it will behave in the future.”

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