• Second orphaned elephant found in Chad after killings

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A second orphaned elephant was rescued in Chad after poachers attacked a herd twice in the same week, SOS Elephants said Tuesday. 


    "The new orphan was rescued yesterday and reached our camp early this morning," SOS Elephants founder Stephanie Vergniault told NBC News. "He is fighting for his life now in our camp with the vet."

    The attacks happened on July 23, when 34 elephants were killed, and on July 27, when 5 carcasses were found.

    Two adult elephants were found alive after the July 27 killing. A female that had three calves with her was wounded and a team was trying to track her to eventually provide aid. 

    An orphan found earlier by SOS Elephants has since been adopted by a female from the herd and appears to be doing well.

    No arrests have been made, Vergniault said.

    The poachers have hacked off the trunks of the elephants in order to take their tusks and sell the ivory.

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  • Elephants slaughtered, orphan found in latest Africa poaching

    SOS Elephants

    These elephants are part of the herd that saw more than 30 members slaughtered.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    The government of Chad said it was searching for poachers who slaughtered part of an elephant herd, while a conservation group said it had found an orphaned infant near the slaughter site.


    SOS Elephants, which is based in the Central African nation of Chad, said it had counted more than 30 carcasses in the slaughter on Tuesday.

    Poachers on horseback fired on the herd, which was across the river from an educational site run by the nonprofit.

    The group said on its Facebook page that since the slaughter happened deep inside Chad it was probably the work of a local poaching gang, not armed groups from neighboring countries. 

    Photos posted on the page showed elephants with their trunks cut off, indicating the poachers were after the tusks. The illegal ivory trade is booming across Africa due to demand from Asia for ivory trinkets.

    SOS Elephants founder Stephanie Vergniault noted that the slaughter was near an oil refinery run by a Chinese company, CNPC. In the past, she posted, "several of their employees" have been caught at the Chad airport "with ivory in their luggage."

    SOS Elephants

    One of the slaughtered elephants, with its trunk hacked off.

    Vergniault on Saturday told NBC News she had contacted the security chief at the airport and he promised to get "his people to double check all luggage, mainly the luggage belonging to the Chinese."

    On the Facebook page, Vergniault added it was "very likely" the orphaned infant's mother was among the elephants killed. "Very sad, very hard moments," she wrote.

    Vergniault urged Chad to create a special law enforcement unit to protect its elephants, and stiffen prison time for poaching. "The poachers need to go 20 years to jail, not 2 years!" she posted.

    A wildlife activist who has followed the work of SOS Elephants said getting milk supplies for the orphaned elephant will be critical. 

    SOS Elephants

    This orphaned elephant, nicknamed Savi, did not survive after her mother was slaughtered in an earlier poaching incident. SOS Elephants founder Stephanie Vergniault is with her.

    "It's difficult to raise elephants, and one problem is getting the right milk formula -- which is very expensive and is shipped from Europe," Laurel Neme told NBC News.

    Nicknamed Toto, the 3-week-old male will possibly be shipped to a large elephant shelter in Kenya, said Neme, who tracks wildlife issues on her website. 

    "Hopefully what will happen," said Neme, who noted Toto stands a better chance than another recent orphan, nicknamed Savi, that died.

    Chad's elephant population is estimated at around 3,000 — a sharp drop since the 1980s, when it had around 20,000, according to SOS Elephants.

    "Tomorrow will be simply too late," Prince William warns as Africa's magnificent wild animals are mercilessly and illegally poached at a rate not seen for decades.

    The slaughter occurred as nations that are part of a wildlife treaty met to work out issues such as the illegal ivory trade.

    As those talks wrapped up Friday, a motion by some African nations to allow the legal sale of ivory from elephants not killed by poachers was tabled for a later meeting.

    Conservation groups urged signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to oppose the move, and to get tougher on the illegal wildlife trade.

    TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said elephant and rhino poaching are at record levels and that countries where poaching is rampant should be barred from the international trade in wildlife.

    "We should not be shy about using CITES trade suspensions as an international tool to prevent a full-blown elephant crisis," said TRAFFIC's Tom Milliken said in a statement issued by the WWF on Friday.

    Just days after Rock Center aired Harry Smith's report, "The Last Stand," on the growing epidemic of illegal rhino poaching in South Africa, three of the rhinos featured in the report were attacked by poachers. Rock Center's Harry Smith reports.

    On Monday, WWF said in a report that "the illegal killing of elephants in Africa is at the highest levels ever recorded, and the epicenter for poaching is Central Africa where elephant populations are experiencing localized extinctions."

    Central African governments this week announced a plan to protect their wildlife, but its effectiveness is a question mark.

    "It is critical that the plan is rapidly implemented because time is running out for the elephants of this region," Colman O Criodain, WWF’s wildlife trade specialist, said in the statement. 

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  • 'Grand Canyon' under Antarctica tied to ice loss, researchers report

    Rob Bingham

    The edge of the Ferrigno Ice Stream is seen from a plane. A valley below the stream as well as an offshore channel appear to be allowing relatively warmer sea water to eat away at the ice from below.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    A newly discovered Antarctica valley buried by ice and as deep as the Grand Canyon could be contributing to rising sea levels, scientists reported Thursday.

    The ancient topography is such that relatively warm sea water could be eating away at the ice edge -- and a question for future research is whether that process is happening elsewhere along Antarctica's coastal rift valleys. 


    A few other ice-covered valleys have been found but the geology of this one, discoverer Rob Bingham told NBC News, shows that "the areas that are most vulnerable (to ice loss) coincide with areas of ancient rifting."

    It seems the geological process over millions of years "preconfigures the topography to a shape that encourages ice loss," said Bingham, a glaciologist at Scotland's University of Aberdeen.

    Reported in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, the find came about when Bingham was part of a British Antarctic Survey team looking at the Ferrigno Ice Stream, an area on the vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, to see why it was losing ice.

    "It was in doing this that we discovered the ice in this region is underlain by a rift" a mile deep in places, Bingham said. Radar showed that "ice losses are concentrated over the rift," he added, allowing researchers to conclude that "the rift topography exacerbates the current ice losses."

    Ice from the rift also carved a channel over millions of years that is now covered by coastal seas and appears to be allowing relatively warmer water to "flow back towards the Antarctic ice margin" and then melt it, Bingham said.

    The melt causes the ice surface slope to steepen "and this in turn accelerates ice flow such that the ice surface drops over time. The presence of the rift valley facilitates this flow and is thus contributing to gradual depletion of the central ice cover."

    Others scientists said the discovery would help better understand the dynamics of Antarctica.

    Rob Bingham

    This illustration shows the Ferrigno Ice Stream, outlined in black and just above a channel, seen in green, that appears to allow relatively warmer water to eat away at the ice margin.

    "There could be more rifts like this and the study gives us ideas to test in other places," Tom Wagner, who manages NASA's ice research programs, told NBC News. Such rifts, he added, "could potentially cause very rapid ice flow."

    Related story: Sudden vast ice melt seen on Greenland

    The British Antarctic Survey agreed on the significance.

    "The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is of great scientific interest and societal importance as it is losing ice faster than any other part of Antarctica with some glaciers shrinking by more than one meter (three feet) per year," it said in a statement coinciding with the study.

    "Thinning ice in West Antarctica is currently contributing nearly 10 percent of global sea level rise," added BAS scientist David Vaughan. "It's important to understand this hot spot of change so we can make more accurate predictions for future sea level rise."

    Study co-author Fausto Ferraccioli, a BAS scientist, told NBC News that satellite and aircraft surveys over the rift would help better explain the dynamics.

    "We now need new airborne geophysical surveys both onshore and offshore," he said, in order to understand all facets of "this changing part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."

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  • Up to 20,000 sea turtle eggs crushed by bulldozers on Caribbean island

    Marc De Verteuil / Papa Bois Conservation

    Dead leatherback sea turtle hatchlings and smashed eggs are seen on the island of Trinidad after heavy equipment was used to divert a river on July 8.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Thousands of leatherback sea turtle hatchlings and eggs were crushed over the weekend by bulldozers and excavators used to divert a river on the Caribbean island of Trinidad.


    "Unfortunately the engineers in charge bulldozed a far greater portion of beach than necessary, and they did destroy many viable nests," the Papa Bois Conservation group posted on its Facebook page.

    It wasn't immediately clear how much of an impact the tragedy would have on the critically endangered species, but the group noted that it happened on "the world's most densely populated leatherback nesting beach."

    Papa Bois said it wasn't opposed to diverting the river, since it had been eroding not only a local eco-tourist hotel but the nesting area itself. But it noted that the work was done without supervision by "any of the local turtle protection groups."

    It also didn't blame the equipment operators, but those "higher up" who told the crews where to work -- "not one of whom was on site to make sure the works were done with as little damage as possible," the group added. "There was no coordination, no leadership."

    Marc De Verteuil / Papa Bois Conservation

    These leatherback sea turtle hatchlings were saved from heavy equipment that shifted a beach on Trinidad, one of two major islands that make up Trinidad and Tobago.

    Sherwin Reyz, a member of the Grand Riviere Environmental Awareness Trust, saved some 500 hatchlings but estimated that up to 20,000 eggs were crushed or consumed by vultures and stray dogs that quickly moved in to eat the remains. 

    "They had a very good meal. I was near tears," Reyz told the Associated Press. "It was a disgusting mess."

    Female sea turtles return to the beaches where they were born to dig sandy nests and incubate eggs. Leatherbacks lay about 100 eggs at a time, but not even 1 percent survive to adulthood. 

    Leatherbacks are the largest sea turtle species -- some more than 7 feet long and weighing 2,000 pounds. They can live 100 years. 

    They are also one of seven species of sea turtles, all of which are endangered due to reduced habitat, human consumption of eggs and even being caught up in fishing gear.

    Marc De Verteuil / Papa Bois Conservation

    This sea turtle hatchling did not survive when heavy equipment diverted a river on a Trinidad beach.

    The Trinidad hotel owner who had been asking the government to redirect the Grand Riviere River said he was shocked by how it was handled.

    "For some reason they dug up the far end of the beach, absolutely encroaching into the good nesting areas," Piero Guerrini, an Italian who owns Mt. Plaisir Estate Hotel, told the Associated Press. "This could have been avoided with a much wiser approach. But it was done too late and it was done in the wrong way." 

    Guerrini's hotel was full of tourists who had come to this Caribbean country to see the tiny leatherback hatchlings head for the sea. Instead they saw hatchlings dying in front of their eyes. "This really put a lot of bad images in people's minds," he added. 

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  • Coral clues to climate: Reefs vanished for 2,500 years

    Richard B. Aronson

    Ian Macintyre, left, of the Smithsonian Institution and Steven Vollmer of Northeastern University pull out a core sample for the coral study they were co-authors on.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Coral reefs along Panama's Pacific coast completely collapsed for 2,500 years due to natural climate cycles, researchers reported in a study Thursday, adding that there's a lesson in the data for man-made climate change: ease up on greenhouse gasses and reefs will restore themselves.


    "We can prevent coral reefs from shutting down again or recover them if they do shut down by reducing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the ocean," study co-author Richard Aronson, a biology professor at Florida Institute of Technology, told msnbc.com.

    The researchers reconstructed 6,000 years of coral reef history by driving pipes into reefs to pull out core samples. 

    "We were shocked to find that 2,500 years of reef growth were missing," Lauren Toth, the lead author and a doctoral student, said in a statement announcing the study in the journal Science. 

    The team found the same gap in earlier studies by other researchers as far away as Australia and Japan, and tied the collapse to an intensification of the natural climate cycle that produces El Nino and La Nina weather events.

    Aronson emphasized that the fact that coral reefs returned does not mean mankind can expect them to survive a climate made warmer by industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

    "It is quite the opposite," he said. "Environmental pressure caused the reef ecosystems to collapse, and relieving that pressure allowed recovery."

    "The same message," he added, "applies to human-caused climate change: by changing the climate we are stressing corals and coral-reef ecosystems, and we will have to stop doing that if we are going to save the reefs."

    John Bruno, a marine biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the study is valuable for showing that the biggest threat facing coral reefs is climate change.

    Lauren T. Toth

    This coral on Panama's Pacific coast was bleached by a 2010 warming event triggered by El Nino.

    "Our modern coral reefs are supremely sensitive to subtle changes in climate even in the absence of local impacts like fishing and pollution," he wrote in a commentary for msnbc.com.

    "In other words, in contrast to what has been argued in a number of high profile essays, reefs do not have to be overfished and polluted to be harmed by climatic fluctuations," wrote Bruno, who was not involved in the study.

    "Everyone agrees that overfishing, particularly the depletion of predators from coral reef ecosystems, is an enormous, global problem," he added. "But the current science indicates that this problem is largely unrelated to the climate change problem. We urgently need to tackle both problems -- simultaneously and with equal vigor and commitment. Unfortunately, solving one will not negate the other."

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  • Interpol: 200 arrested in biggest crackdown on elephant slaughter

    Interpol

    Ivory ornaments and animal skins are displayed as part of INTERPOL's crackdown on illegal wildlife trafficking.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    More than 200 people were arrested and two tons of ivory seized — along with guns, lion pelts, rhino horns and live birds — in the largest operation against wildlife smugglers to date, Interpol announced Tuesday. As sizable as the numbers are, though, the real test will be whether Africa finally sees a drop in the record slaughter of elephants and rhinos.


    The three-month operation ranged across 17 African countries as well as China, where officials cracked down on websites and stores selling ornaments made from ivory, the trade for which is banned globally.

    "The intelligence gathered during Operation Worthy will enable us to identify the links between the poachers and the global networks driving and facilitating the crime," David Higgins, head of Interpol's environmental crime program, said in a statement.

    The International Fund for Animal Welfare helped Interpol by training officers in African countries, and said it also provided leads that allowed China to uncover 700 cases of illegal wildlife trade. 

    Just days after Rock Center aired Harry Smith's report, "The Last Stand," on the growing epidemic of illegal rhino poaching in South Africa, three of the rhinos featured in the report were attacked by poachers. Rock Center's Harry Smith reports.

    China "busted 13 gangs, punished 1,031 illegal traders, seized over 130,000 wild animals and their animal products," IFAW said in a statement, adding that 7,155 shops and 628 websites selling banned animals were shut down.

    Still, the two tons of ivory seized is just a fraction of what's smuggled each year.

    Last year, a record 23 tons of ivory were confiscated -- which means many more got smuggled out of Africa. Those 23 tons probably represent some 2,500 elephants, the international monitoring group TRAFFIC said in a statement.

    Report: Tens of thousands of elephants likely killed last year

    And this year seizures include 359 tusks, weighing 1.6 tons, found in containers shipped out of Kenya.

    In Cameroon, several hundred elephants were slaughtered last January -- inside a national park.

    Africa's elephant population is estimated around 450,000 -- compared to between 5 million and 10 million in the 1930s.

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  • 60 dams in Brazil's Amazon? Controversy spills over into 'Earth Summit II'

    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    Brazil's biggest infrastructure project -- the $11 billion Belo Monte dam -- is also its most controversial, and one showcased at the international summit on June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro held 20 years after the Earth Summit.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Striking a balance between economic drive and environmental protection is the challenge nations are pondering this week in Brazil at an event marking the 20th anniversary of the U.N.-backed Earth Summit.


    Brazil faces that issue in its own backyard -- the Amazon. Deforestation has received plenty of attention in recent years, but lesser known is the plan to build 60 dams there -- including the $11 billion Belo Monte project. 

    Expected to be producing electricity by 2015, Belo Monte will be the world's third largest dam. And if the name sounds familiar, it's because Sting and other celebrities helped block the dam in 1989.

    But the project is back and, for Brazil's government, Belo Monte means thousands of local jobs and enough clean energy to power 27 million homes -- not to mention goodwill among those potential voters.

    For some 20,000 people living near the site, Belo Monte means an altered way of life. Damming the Xingu River, some 2,000 miles north of "Earth Summit II" in Rio de Janeiro, will create a reservoir that floods existing homes and rainforest as well as reduce a 90-mile stretch downriver to "a tiny fraction" of its normal flow, says Philip Fearnside, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Research in Amazonia.

    Slideshow: Dams rising across Brazil's Amazon

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    The Belo Monte dam is among 60 Brazil plans to build in its Amazon region to help power its growing economy. But the vision also has its critics.

    Launch slideshow

    Flooded residents will be relocated and given some compensation, Fearnside notes, but those living along the 90-mile "dry stretch," including members of two tribes, were left out of those talks. For them, as well as local farmers and fishermen, a river that provided food, water and a highway will be gone.

    On Friday, several hundred protesters occupied part of the site, timing it just ahead of the Rio summit, and even dug a channel through an earthen dam built for the project in a symbolic bid to "free the Xingu."

    Amazon Watch, a U.S.-based activist group that helped organize the protest, is planning a second march in Rio on Tuesday.

    Slideshow:

    Mario Tama / Getty Images

    The Amazon rainforest has meant prosperous times for many in Brazil, but environmental and cultural disaster for others.

    Launch slideshow

    Fearnside is among those who don't buy the government argument. Most of any new electricity capacity will go to make exports, not power homes, he told msnbc.com.

    Academy Award-winning director James Cameron discuss the environmental work Avatar inspired and his effort to prevent the Belo Monte dam.

    "Only 27 percent of Brazil's electicity is for residential use. Most is for industries, including electro-intensive export commodities such as aluminum," he said. "Just the electricity exported in aluminum represents more than the production of Belo Monte."

    "Brazil has many other alternatives," he added, starting with more of an effort to conserve energy.

    Fearnside says a stretch of the Xingxu below the reservoir will be reduced to a "tiny fraction" of its current flow. He also suspects five smaller support dams will follow -- with unknown impacts on indigenous lands and the rainforest.

    The reservoir itself will mean flooding a quarter of Altamira, a city of 130,000, as well as farms and rainforest, Fearnside noted.

    A biologist at the government institute since 1978, Fearnside recently documented his concerns in an article for the Global Water Forum, writing that "the Brazilian government has launched an unprecedented drive to dam the Amazon’s tributaries, and Belo Monte is the spearhead for its efforts."

    Report: Low expectations 20 years after first Earth Summit 
    Report: Diplomats agree on 'weak' text 

    After listing a history of weakened environmental protection, Fearnside wasn't optimistic for a balanced review of the pros and cons of dozens of dams in the Amazon.

    "The stage appears set for breaking down Brazil’s environmental licensing system even further," he concluded, "opening the way for the many other controversial dams."

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  • 800-year-old tree at Vancouver Island park falls to illegal loggers

    Wilderness Comittee

    Torrance Coste, an activist with the Wilderness Committee on Canada's Vancouver Island, surveys the stump of an 800-year-old red cedar that poachers cut up and hauled out of Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park.


    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    The death of an ancient cedar tree inside a remote park on Canada's Vancouver Island is being showcased by an environmental group seeking more protection against illegal loggers.

    The 800-year-old tree was attacked by poachers with power saws over time at Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park, the Wilderness Committee reported Thursday. Cedar is valuable as material for roofing shingles.

    The poachers, still at large, were able to cut through 80 percent of the base of the tree -- which had a diameter of nine feet -- before park staff finally noticed what was going on, Wilderness Committee campaigner Torrance Coste told msnbc.com. The damage was so severe that park staff had to fell the entire tree for safety reasons.

    The park left the fallen tree at the site so that it could decompose, returning nutrients to the soil, Coste said, but since then poachers "have returned at their leisure without fear of consequence and cut up, hauled out, and taken away the tree in sections.

    "This has required seriously heavy equipment," he added. "The area has been trashed, and there are huge steel cables lying around all over the place ... sections of the trunk have been removed up until as recently as two weeks ago."

    The Wilderness Committee urged British Columbia, which incorporates Vancouver Island, to beef up funding for park rangers. 

    Wilderness Committee

    The cedar was left by park staff to decompose at the site, but only this section and a few pieces are still there after poachers got to the tree.

    "While the poachers themselves have obviously committed a terrible crime, fault for this incident should also lay with the Ministry of Environment and their long-time negligence of our parks," Coste said. 

    The controversy has reached British Columbia's government, with the opposition New Democrat Party criticizing the Liberal Party government, The Canadian Press reported. 

    "To suggest that anyone is able to protect all of those areas to the level that the member suggests is fiscally irresponsible," responded Environment Minister Terry Lake.

    "I'll tell you what irresponsible is," countered New Democrat Scott Fraser, "10 years ago there were 194 park rangers in British Columbia, there's under 100 now."

    The Wilderness Committee, for its part, also fears illegal logging of cedar might be happening elsewhere on Vancouver Island. 

    “What we need to know" from the environment ministry "is if cedar poaching is happening anywhere else," Coste said.

    A parks official said investigators have little information to work with.

    "We have no eyewitnesses or license plates," Don Closson told the Canadian Press.

    A police officer echoed the lack of evidence, adding that the poachers were likely after the cedar for roofing shingles.

    "It's obviously much more gain than going out and taking a whole pile of firewood," Sgt. Dave Voller told the Canadian Press. "A logging truck loaded with cedar would be worth thousands and thousands of dollars."

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  • Vast Antarctic ice sheet 'in play' with global warming

    Ralph Timmermann / Alfred Wegener Institute

    Part of Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is seen in the Weddell Sea. Two new studies project the shelf will disappear by 2100, potentially releasing ice trapped on Antarctica's largest ice sheet.

    By Miguel Llanos, NBC News

    Scientists have long focused on Antarctica’s smaller ice sheet as being vulnerable to warming, but two new studies project that part of the continent's much larger ice sheet is also at risk -- and that ice now held back on land there could add to sea level rise by 2100.


    "This is the first legitimate evidence that this part of Antarctica is in play," Bob Bindschadler, a NASA earth scientist who has studied Antarctica for 30 years, told msnbc.com. "The potential, the reservoir of ice ... is vast."

    In fact, that area, known as the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, has 10 times as much ice as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. 

    One study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, used a computer model to project what would happen in Antarctica's Weddell Sea if temperatures rose in line with U.N. projections for 2100. 

    The result was a change in ocean circulation and a temperature increase that would disintegrate the now-intact Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf, with warmer water eating away from underneath.

    Ice shelves like Ronne-Filchner sit on water, and thus their disintegration can't raise sea levels directly. But they also hold back ice sheets that sit atop land -- and those would start to drain into the sea if shelves weren't there to block them.

    In the past century, as the climate has warmed, sea level rise has accelerated. Scientists predict it will only increase, and they're studying changes in the ocean and land to better understand how and why the water is rising. NBC's Anne Thompson reports for "Changing Planet," produced by NBC Learn in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

    The Ronne-Filchner shelf is unusual in that it "sits on the fence" between Antarctica's two ice sheets, so it "can affect both sides," said Bindschadler, who was not involved in the research.

    The finding echoes earlier research showing a similar warming effect in the Amundsen Sea on the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Ice shelves along the Amundsen Sea coast have weakened in recent decades. 

    "The Weddell Sea is as vulnerable as the Amundsen Sea," study co-author Hartmut Hellmer of Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute said at a press conference, "and it affects a much larger ice shelf."

    "We found a mechanism which drives warm water towards the coast with an enormous impact on the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in the coming decades," he added in a statement released with the study.

    National Snow and Ice Data Center

    The Ronne-Filchner ice shelf, seen in blue, sits between Antarctica's two ice sheets, which are divided by the Transantarctic Mountains going from that ice shelf to the Ross ice shelf.

    "It appears all hell could break loose there, too," added Bindschadler.

    The second study, published in Nature Geoscience on Wednesday, found that near the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has a slope that would accelerate melt since warmer seas would flow toward the ice being held back on land.

    That scenario, said Bindschadler, "sets off alarms in my mind."

    The study authors -- and Bindschadler -- emphasized that the east sheet has not started eroding but they certainly worry about the potential.

    Alfred Wegener Institute

    The scenario seen by researchers includes warming seas that reduce sea ice and eat away at the bottom of the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf.

    "It still doesn't look like they've done much," Bindschadler said of the ice streams that could flow into the Weddell Sea, "but lo and behold, the vulnerability is perhaps greater than the ice shelves we've been focused on recently."

    Tom Wagner, also a NASA earth scientist who studies ice, said the work was "the first to tie everything together -- from the ocean through to the glaciers.

    "While all projections have uncertainty," he added, "the physical processes considered here are well known and the extrapolations reasonable." 

    Just how much ice could escape into the sea -- and raise global sea levels -- if the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf disintegrated is the big unknown. 

    The two studies didn't look at that aspect but "we think there is cause for concern," said Martin Siegert, co-author of the slope study and a University of Edinburgh researcher.

    Another group at the Alfred Wegener Institute is now studying the potential impact on sea levels. 

    If the ice sheet flow toward the sea is as great as the ice shelf loss, the institute said in its statement, then global sea levels would rise 0.17 inches a year.

    That might not sound like much, but sea levels rose by just 0.05 inches a year from 2003 to 2010 due to ice melt, the institute noted. 

    Moreover, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects other sources will raise sea levels between seven inches and two feet by 2100, potentially flooding many low-lying areas.

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