The water surrounding the world's largest glacier has never been warmer

The East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest glacier on the planet.

Almost as big as the United States, it covers most of Antarctica.

If it seemed to be, to date, still spared by global warming, a study, published this Tuesday in

, reveals that it would now also be threatened.

Indeed, as reported by our colleagues from

, the waters surrounding it would be increasingly hot.

Studying nearly 90 years of oceanographic observations in the region, the study authors found that temperatures in southern Antarctic waters increased by 0.1 to 0.4°C per decade during the first half of the 20th century, then 0.3 to 0.9°C per decade from the 1990s to today.

Catastrophic climate damage

According to scientists, climate change is clearly the cause of this warming of the waters.

The increase in greenhouse gases changes the direction of the wind, bringing westerly winds towards Antarctica in summer.

The latter bringing with them the hot waters.

As a result, while the East Antarctic ice sheet had been preserved until then thanks to the very cold waters that surround it, it is now affected.

The authors of this study therefore warn of "the urgency of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 ℃, in order to avoid the most catastrophic climatic damage".

Indeed, if the stability of the glacier were reached, this could have serious consequences.

"Warmer waters and the resulting sea level rise can damage marine life and threaten coastal human settlements," they said.

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• Global warming

• Antarctic

• Temperature

• Water

• Planet