The mystery of Antarctica’s speeding glacier

With the possible exception of the ice that covers Greenland, the West Antarctic ice shelf is the most important body of water in the world. If it thaws, the results will be disastrous for millions, raising sea levels and flooding coastal cities such as London, New York, Tokyo and Calcutta. So it is understandable that scientists are alarmed as to why one particular section of it – Pine Island Glacier – is melting so much faster than the rest.

Pine Island, which contains around 30 trillion litres of water, is slipping into the sea at an ever accelerating rate, a development that alone could raise sea levels by as much as 10cm over the next century. Starting at an altitude of 2,500m, the glacier is 95 miles long and 18 miles wide, reaching the sea as an ice wall 750m high. Even before it began to speed up, it was one of the fastest-flowing glaciers in the world, at nine yards a day.

“We believe that something about the ocean around where the glacier ice moves from being grounded to floating has changed, and this is driving the thinning and accelerating ice flow,” explains Dr Adrian Jenkins, who is leading the BAS research. “But we really have very little idea of what is actually going on beneath the ice, as we have not been able to see through it