West Antarctica’s history of rapid melting foretells sudden shifts in continent’s ‘catastrophic’ geology
- Written by Christine Siddoway, Professor of Geology, Colorado College
The ice that now covers West Antarctica was not there 3.6 million years ago, after a massive collapse of the ice sheet during a warming period.Anna Ruth Halberstadt, CC BY-NC-NDDue to its thick, vast ice sheet, Antarctica appears to be a single, continuous landmass centered over the South Pole and spanning both hemispheres of the globe. The...