科學(xué)家們首次瞥見南極洲不穩(wěn)定的斯韋茨冰川深處

Scientists Grab First Glimpse Deep Underneath Antarctica's Unstable Thwaites Glacier

科學(xué)家們首次瞥見南極洲不穩(wěn)定的斯韋茨冰川深處

Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier hasn't been doing so well. It's close to irreversibly melting, it has a huge cavity growing underneath it, and it's the poster child for everything wrong with our reliance on fossil fuels.

南極洲斯韋茨冰川的狀況一直不太好。它幾乎是不可逆的融化，冰川下面有一個巨大的空洞，是我們依賴化石燃料而犯下的一切錯誤的發(fā)源地。

But a robotic underwater vehicle called Icefin just snapped the first pictures of Thwaites' foundations of the ocean floor, and the results are surprisingly peaceful.

但一個名為“Icefin”的水下機(jī)器人，剛剛拍攝了斯韋茨海底地基的第一張照片，結(jié)果出奇地平靜。

Icefin wasn't just there to take soothing videos to calm our climate-change-caused anxiety. The research vehicle has an important job to help scientists monitor and better understand the condition of the glacier.

Icefin不僅僅是為了緩解氣候變化引起的焦慮而拍攝舒緩視頻。這個研究工具的重要任務(wù)，是幫助科學(xué)家監(jiān)測和更好地了解冰川的狀況。

The robotic vehicle investigated the 'grounding line' under the glacier – the changing line between where Thwaites rests on the ocean bed and where it floats over water. That grounding line is important for the stability of the glacier, because the farther the line retreats, the faster the ice flows into the sea, therefore adding to our rising sea levels.

機(jī)器人車調(diào)查了冰川下的“接地線”——這條變化的線介于思偉茨停留在海底和漂浮在水面之間。這條接地線對冰川的穩(wěn)定性非常重要，因為這條線越往后退，冰流入海洋的速度就越快，隨之會增加海平面上升的速度。

Visiting the grounding line is one of the reasons work like this is important because we can drive right up to it and actually measure where it is, said Britney Schmidt, a geophysicist who is part of International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration.

“觀察接地線是這項工作的重要原因之一，因為我們可以直接把機(jī)器人車開到那，并實際測量它的位置。”參與國際思偉茨冰川合作的地球物理學(xué)家Britney Schmidt說。

It's the first time anyone has done that or has ever even seen the grounding zone of a major glacier under the water, and that's the place where the greatest degree of melting and destabilisation can occur.

“這是第一次有人這么做，甚至是第一次看到水下主要冰川的擱淺地帶，而那里是最容易發(fā)生融化和不穩(wěn)定的地方。”

According to news reports, at the base of the ice on the grounding line, the team found that the water was 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing point.

根據(jù)新聞報道，在接地線的冰層底部，考察隊發(fā)現(xiàn)水比正常冰點高出2攝氏度。