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“Our research provides a warning from the past about the speeds that ice sheets are physically capable of retreating at,” said Dr Christine Batchelor at Newcastle University in the UK, who led the research. “It shows that pulses of rapid retreat can be far quicker than anything we’ve seen so far.”

“These pulses translate into sea level rise and could be really important for sea defences,” she said. The rate of loss was critical if, for example, a rise expected over 200 years could actually occur in 20 years, Batchelor said. The research could also be used to enable computer models to make better predictions about future ice loss.

Most previous estimates of the rate of ice sheet collapse have come from satellite data, which has been collected for about 50 years. The geological data used in the study stretches back thousands of years, allowing a much greater range of conditions to be analysed.

The research, published in the journal Nature, used high-resolution mapping of the sea bed off Norway, where large ice sheets collapsed into the sea at the end of the last ice age 20,000 years ago. The scientists focused on sets of small ridges parallel to the coast, which formed at the line where the base of the ice sheet met the oceans, called the grounding line.

As the tides lifted the ice sheets up and down, sediments at the grounding line were squashed into ridges twice a day. As the base of the ice sheet melted over days and weeks, the grounding line retreated towards the shore, leaving behind sets of parallel ridges. Measuring the distance between the ridges enabled the scientists to calculate the speed of the Norwegian ice sheet collapse.


They found speeds of between 50 metres a day and 600 metres a day. That is up to 20 times faster than the speediest retreat recorded previously by satellites, of 30 metres a day at the Pope Glacier in West Antarctica. Ridges had been studied before, in Antarctica, but only over an area of 10 sq km. The new study covered an area of 30,000 sq km, and 7,600 ridges, allowing the scientists to understand what is likely to control the rates of retreat.

I'm looking forward to my ocean front property in Austin, Texas.

warnings from the past weren't events caused by manmade CO2
Probably not 1.5C differences

sea level changes seem to be gradual enough that folks won't be drowning like a Tsunami

20 years would REALLY surprise me and 95% of the "experts"

only the fringe looney 4.5% of "experts" crying the sky is falling wouldn't be shocked

100 years would surprise me