Important Takeaways:

• Experts are on red alert after uncovering a ticking time bomb in Antarctica that would reshape the continent and dramatically increase sea levels worldwide.
• More than 100 volcanoes lie beneath the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is ‘particularly vulnerable to collapse, yet its position atop an active volcanic rift is seldom considered,’ the study noted.
• As the ice sheet melts, the amount of mass pushing down on the surface decreases, which creates an uplifting effect in the subsurface.
• This, in turn, allows magma chambers deep within the continent to expand, which speeds up the processes that lead to an eruption by putting stress on the chamber walls and releasing gas trapped inside the magma.
• When volcanoes erupt, this drives more melting at the surface, and the process starts over again.
• The researchers modeled this phenomenon using over 4,000 advanced computer simulations, finding that surface melting speeds up the process that initiates the first stages of an eruption by tens to hundreds of years.
• Some of the chambers released enough heat to melt more than three million cubic feet of ice a year.
• If the ice sheet completely collapsed, sea levels could rise a catastrophic 190 feet.
• This would completely submerge entire coastal cities such as New York, Tokyo and Shanghai, rendering them uninhabitable.
• Luckily, scientists believe that apocalyptic scenario is still a long way off.

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