Part of Antarctica’s ice sheet collapsed 9,000 years ago under similar climate conditions as today

By Adrian Villellas – Earth.com

About 9,000 years ago, part of Antarctica’s eastern ice sheet collapsed astonishingly fast, driven by warmer ocean water. The study focuses on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, a vast body of land ice in East Antarctica.

Altogether, Antarctica’s ice holds enough water to raise sea levels by about 190 feet if it melted. Fresh evidence from seafloor sediments near Japan’s Syowa Station now links that ancient collapse to warm deep ocean currents.