The glacier already adds a sixth of a millimeter to sea level rise each year; but losing the ice shelf could double or triple that rate, Joughin said.
Pine Island contains roughly 180 trillion tons of ice — enough to cause 1.6 feet of sea level rise.
It’s as if the cork in the bottle containing Pine Island glacier is crumbling.“The observation of this process [at Pine Island glacier] is new and concerning,†said Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Royal Holloway University of London who was not involved in the new study.Pine Island and other West Antarctic glaciers are much bigger than the ones that flow out of the Antarctic peninsula, she noted, making the consequences of retreat far more extreme.“It’s not at all inconceivable to say the rest of the ice shelf could be gone in a decade,†Joughin said.