Huge ice core reveals frightening change in Antarctica – “an uncontrollable process”. The West Antarctic ice sheet suddenly shrank dramatically at the end of the last ice age.
In one place, around 8,000 years ago, the ice sheet lost 450 meters of thickness in less than 200 years. The research team believes that the thinning of ice may have been triggered by warm water getting under the ice. Warm water probably broke away from the bedrock and melted the ice, the researchers say.