This article, presented by the Alfred Wegener Institute, discusses the current threat that ice shelves are under and how ocean gyres are playing a role in this scary rewriting of our planet’s composition. The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is the second largest ice shelf in the Antarctic. It is located near the Weddell Sea, a sea that used to be this ice shelf’s barrier. The Weddell Sea freezes enough each year that a sufficient amount of salt is released; enough, in fact, to create a sort of protective armor in the salty waters that this ice shelf sits in. This water stays colder, protecting the ice shelf from warmer waters being carried by in a current called the Weddell Gyre.

    But what if this protective armor ceases to protect the ice shelf? Well this just may be case. Global warming and the rising air temperatures associated with such have become an obvious red alert in regions around the world. In the Weddell Sea, for example, these warming temperatures are preventing ice from forming as it used to. Without proper ice formations each year, salt is not properly being released, meaning that this armor is deteriorating. Readings from the continental shelf break already have confirmed that warm currents being carried by the Weddell Gyre are slowly penetrating, getting closer to the ice shelf. Once is reaches the shelf and warm water begins to flow under the shelf, the melting will only exponentially accelerate. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is becoming more and more exposed, and while this process takes centuries, the threat does loom, as it has crossed a point in which recovery and reception is no longer feasible.