Jules Verne sent his fictional submarine, the Nautilus, to the South Pole through a hidden ocean beneath a thick ice cap. These ice shelves buttress the continent’s massive land-based ice cap and play an important role in the assessment of future sea level rise. The importance of these ice shelves for sea level rise over the next few centuries is very apparent. Antarctic ice shelves are like a pit stop in this loop and so what happens in Antarctica resonates globally. Faster melting ice shelves will change the ocean stratification, with repercussions for global ocean circulation - and one result of this appears to be greater climate variability.

Source: Stuff July 02, 2020 04:27 UTC