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by kenfox 3250 days ago
The language that scientists have used is significantly less confident than yours (from http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/):

> Dr Martin O’Leary: “Although this is a natural event, and we’re not aware of any link to human-induced climate change, this puts the ice shelf in a very vulnerable position. This is the furthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history."

I interpret those comments as saying it's currently an open research question. Lots of popular press I've read though does leap to there being some link. I think it pays to be open minded here and consider that ocean and polar warming could have an impact on ice shelf stability.

2 comments

"This is the furthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history."

I'm curious; in the context of the ice front, when does recorded history begin?

Are we talking, 10s, 100s, or 1000s of years?

An obvious minimum link is that the area which has melted and broke off, also coincidently happens to have elevated temps recorded and indicated by modelling.

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_antarctic...

There is still the whole "correlation isnt causation / aint necessarily so" caveat, but the correlation with AWG is obvious.