623172 external_news 1562779427 1563200601 Antarctica faces a tipping point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible even if global heating eases, research suggests. A NASA-funded study found instability in the Thwaites glacier meant there would probably come a point when it was impossible to stop it flowing into the sea and triggering a 50-cm sea level rise. Other Antarctic glaciers were likely to be similarly unstable. Alex Robel, an assistant professor at the US Georgia Institute of Technology (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) and the study’s leader, said if instability was triggered, the ice sheet could be lost in the space of 150 years, even if temperatures stopped rising. “It will keep going by itself and that’s the worry,” he said.The work was covered also by Fox News, Daily Mail, UPI, CNN, Time, Radio New Zealand, Cheddar, The Weather Network, and Yahoo News.

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