{"id":263478,"date":"2025-11-05T04:09:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263478\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T04:09:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:09:19","slug":"hektoria-glacier-in-antarctica-shrinks-at-fastest-rate-recorded-in-modern-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263478\/","title":{"rendered":"Hektoria Glacier in Antarctica shrinks at fastest rate recorded in modern history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Antarctic scientists have documented the fastest retreat of a glacier in modern history, after it lost eight kilometres of ice in just two months, according to a new report.<\/p>\n

The Hektoria Glacier on the eastern Antarctic Peninsula is roughly 300 square kilometres \u2014 about 10 times larger than the City of Sydney local government area.<\/p>\n

International researchers, led by the University of Colorado Boulder, analysed satellite images and seismic data to investigate how and why the glacier rapidly lost ice.<\/p>\n

A glacier “retreats” when it melts or erodes faster than it gains new ice, causing the front of the glacier to move backwards.<\/p>\n

A report on their study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience<\/a>, shows the glacier shrank 25km between January 2022 and March 2023.<\/p>\n

\"Hektoria<\/p>\n

Scientists said a similar retreat on larger glaciers would have “catastrophic” impacts. (Supplied: Naomi Ochwat)<\/p>\n

This included a retreat of 8km between November and December 2022 \u2014 an unprecedented rate in the modern glaciological record.<\/p>\n

“Hektoria Glacier is small by Antarctic standards \u2026 but a similar rapid retreat on larger Antarctic glaciers could have catastrophic implications for global sea level rise,” the university said in a media release.<\/p>\n

Glacier’s rapid retreat occurred after collapse of ice shelf<\/p>\n

Hektoria is one of several glaciers that fed into the Larsen B ice shelf before its collapse in 2002.<\/p>\n

Without the ice shelf’s buttressing effect, those glaciers retreated at an accelerated rate for about a decade, until sea ice fastened along the coast and slowed their pace.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

But in 2022, the fastened sea ice broke away, which subsequently caused the glaciers to retreat at an even faster speed, particularly during the summer months.<\/p>\n

The report said Hektoria’s “extraordinary retreat” was linked to its positioning over an “ice plain” \u2014 a flat area where the glacier was only “lightly grounded”.<\/p>\n

This, according to the researchers, caused a large part of the glacier to become buoyant, allowing chunks to break off into the ocean as icebergs.<\/p>\n

“Hence, we conclude that in this case, retreat primarily resulted from an ice plain calving process, rather than atmospheric or oceanic conditions as suggested previously,” the report stated.<\/p>\n

‘Doomsday’ glacier could begin rapid melt<\/a><\/p>\n

Scientists have mapped underwater terrain near the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica for the first time.<\/p>\n

“This implies that marine-terminating glaciers with ice plain bed geometry can be easily destabilised.”<\/p>\n

The report noted that ice plains have been detected in other parts of Antarctica, including the Ross Ice Shelf and the so-called “doomsday” Thwaites Glacier.<\/p>\n

“Therefore, it is imperative to document the bedrock geometry beneath the glaciers around Antarctica to evaluate the potential for this type of instability to occur, and incorporate rapid buoyancy-driven retreat in models predicting the fate of the Antarctic ice sheet.”<\/p>\n

Changes like those in ‘warmer’ areas<\/p>\n

Poul Christoffersen is a glaciologist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.<\/p>\n

While he was not involved in the study, he said the results were significant.<\/p>\n

\"Penguins<\/p>\n

A glacier “retreats” when it melts or erodes faster than it gains new ice, causing the front of the glacier to move backwards. (Reuters:\u00a0Natalie Thomas)<\/p>\n

“It is definitely or unarguably a very fast retreat that they’re documenting,” Professor Christoffersen said.<\/p>\n

“It’s also a retreat that is a large proportion of the size of [this glacier] \u2014 that’s also very clear.<\/p>\n

“To have a glacier cut in half by size, it’s extremely uncommon.”<\/p>\n

He said the changes observed with the Hektoria Glacier were reminiscent of those seen in Greenland, a region not as cold as Antarctica.<\/p>\n

“Some people call that the ‘Arctic-ification’ or ‘Greenland-ification’ of Antarctica, meaning that the glaciers are showing signs or characteristics of glaciers elsewhere on the Earth that are typically warmer.”<\/p>\n

He said the study also corroborated previous observations suggesting the rapid retreat of glaciers thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Antarctic scientists have documented the fastest retreat of a glacier in modern history, after it lost eight kilometres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[6391,64,63,68,75,39479,154454,4359,154452,154453,154451,128,106042],"class_list":{"0":"post-263478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-antarctica","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-glacier-melt","14":"tag-glacier-retreat","15":"tag-global-warming","16":"tag-hektoria-glacier","17":"tag-ice-sheet","18":"tag-ice-shelf","19":"tag-science","20":"tag-sea-level"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}