A research team has documented a worrying event in Antarctica. The Hektoria Glacier on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula retreated by more than five miles in just two months – ten times faster than ever observed for a glacier on solid ground. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, raises new urgent questions about the stability of the ice sheets and the future development of sea levels.
Antarctica: ‘I Couldn’t Believe the Vastness’
Antarctica is considered a sensitive barometer for the state of the global climate. Therefore, researchers have been observing the Hektoria Glacier for years, after the neighboring Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed in 2002. While the huge ice shelf had previously stabilized the glacier, Hektoria began to slide into the sea faster and faster as the sea ice also broke up. But what happened at the end of 2022 surpassed anything known before. Within a few weeks, the glacier front retreated by 5.1 miles – at a speed of at times 2,625 feet per day.
Dr. Naomi Ochwat from the University of Colorado Boulder, the lead author of the study, was deeply shaken during a flight over the region. “When we flew over Hektoria in early 2024, I couldn’t believe the vastness of the area that had collapsed,” IFLScience quotes her. “I had seen the fjord and notable mountain features in the satellite images, but being there in person filled me with astonishment at what had happened.”
Her team now assumes that the glacier in Antarctica rested on a flat rock surface, a so-called ice plain. As the ice thinned, it eventually lost contact with the ground, began to float – and ultimately broke apart in a short time.
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“I Am Not Fully Convinced”
In Antarctica, this process could also destabilize other glaciers. “Hektoria’s retreat is a bit of a shock — this kind of lighting-fast retreat really changes what’s possible for other, larger glaciers on the continent,” said co-author Dr. Ted Scambos. “If the same conditions set up in some of the other areas, it could greatly speed up sea level rise from the continent.”
But not all researchers are convinced that Hektoria was actually resting on the seabed. Some argue that the observed changes could also occur with a floating ice shelf. “I think the mechanism and rate of retreat proposed are plausible in Antarctic ice plain settings, but because of uncertainty about where the grounding zone was located at Hektoria, I am not fully convinced that this has been observed here,” Dr. Christine Batchelor, a lecturer in Physical Geography at Newcastle University, told the BBC.
But one point unites the researchers, “we are in absolute agreement that the changes in the polar regions are scarily rapid,” emphasized climate scientist Prof. Anna Hogg from the University of Leeds. The new discovery therefore shows that Antarctica is far more vulnerable to climate change than long assumed.
Sources: “Record grounded glacier retreat caused by an ice plain calving process” (Nature Geoscience, 2025); IFLScience; BBC
This article was originally published on futurezone.de / 4P.de and has been carefully translated.