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Antarctic Glacier Accused of "Ice Piracy"

When viewed from space, a very rude glacier in Antarctica was caught stealing ice from its neighbor as it melted.

In a new study published in the journal The Cryosphere, researchers from England's University of Leeds found that one West Antarctic glacier has been engaging in "ice piracy," essentially bulking up while its neighbors thin due to melting.

Using satellite imagery taken between 2005 and 2022, the environmental researchers were surprised to find that although three glaciers — Kohler East, Pope, and Smith — had begun to thin 51 percent faster per year, their neighbor, the Kohler West, actually slowed down by ten percent.

According to Heather Selley, a Leeds PhD researcher who served as the paper's lead author, these disparate thinning speeds seemed to have strange consequences.

"We think that the observed slowdown on Kohler West Glacier is due to the redirection of ice flow towards its neighbor — Kohler East," she explained in a press release. "This is due to the large change in Kohler West's surface slope, likely caused by the vastly different thinning rates on its neighboring glaciers. Because Kohler East's ice stream is flowing and thinning faster as it travels, it absorbs, or 'steals' ice from Kohler West."

Like a child siphoning water from their friend's bucket into their own, this "ice piracy" involves ice being "redirected from one glacier to another, and the accelerating glacier is essentially 'thieving' ice from its slowing neighbor."

While this phenomenon is not unknown to environmental scientists, it used to take hundreds or even thousands of years to occur. Observing it happen over a period of just 18 years was "fascinating," Selley said, but also troubling.

The region of Antarctica where this ice piracy occurred is, as the European Space Agency noted, known for having "the highest recorded rates of thinning."

The faster these glaciers melt, the higher sea levels rise, which can have severe consequences around the world. While scientists are well aware of the dangers of ever-increasing glacial retreat, this rapid ice piracy effect has seemingly thrown a curveball into their knowledge.

"Our results show that there is substantial [melting] speed-up in this region of Antarctica, which has the highest recorded rates of thinning," Selley said. "Both of these are key indicators of the stability of an ice sheet and therefore have implications for predicting future sea level change."

It's unlikely this ice theft will substantially alter the rate at which the world's glaciers are melting into the ocean and raising sea levels with it. But it's still an unexpected consequence of climate change that science had not, until now, witnessed occurring so quickly.