Using artificial intelligence, satellite observations and predictions from climate models, a group of researchers from Switzerland and Belgium calculated that an average of nearly 9,000 meteors disappear from the surface of the ice sheet for every tenth degree increase in global air temperature. This loss has serious consequences because meteorites are unique examples of extraterrestrial objects that shed light on the origins of life on Earth and the formation of the Moon.

Disappearing at an alarming rate

By 2050, a quarter of the estimated 300,000 to 800,000 meteorites in Antarctica will be lost to melting glaciers. By the end of the century, researchers predict that this number could increase, with meteorite loss approaching three-quarters of the continent’s meteorites under a strong warming scenario.

Harry Zecollari, published in the magazine Nature Climate Change , led the research, working under the supervision of Professor Daniel Farinotti in the Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology Laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich. Zecollari and co-lead Veronika Tollenaar of the Free University of Brussels show in the study that ongoing warming is causing the loss of about 5,000 meteorites per year, outpacing efforts to collect Antarctic meteorites by a factor of five.

Meteors are time capsules of the universe

Zecollari, now an associate professor at the Department of Glaciology at Vrieux University in Brussels, calls for a major international effort to preserve the scientific value of meteorites: “We must accelerate and intensify efforts to recover Antarctic meteorites. The loss of Antarctic meteorites is in many ways the result of scientists collecting them from vanishing glaciers.” “It’s like the loss of data collected from ice cores; when they disappear, some of the mysteries of the universe also disappear.”

Meteors are debris from space that provide unique information about our solar system. Antarctica is the most productive place to find meteorites, and approximately 60 percent of all meteorites found on Earth to date have been collected from the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet. The flow of the ice sheet concentrates meteors in areas called “meteor landing zones”; Here their dark shells make them easy to spot. In addition to intensifying meteorite retrieval operations, there is also the potential to increase the efficiency of meteorite retrieval missions in the short term. This potential depends primarily on data-driven analysis to identify undiscovered meteorite landing sites and mapping areas of exposed blue ice where meteorites are often found.

Extraterrestrial heritage is slipping away

Because of their dark color, meteors are essentially heated by the surrounding ice. When this heat is transferred from the meteorites to the ice, it can warm the ice and eventually cause the ice to melt locally, causing the meteorites to sink below the surface of the ice sheet. Once meteors enter the ice sheet from a shallow depth, they can no longer be detected and are therefore lost to science.

As atmospheric temperatures increase, the surface temperature of the ice also increases and losses increase. “Even if the temperature of the ice is well below freezing, dark meteorites are so heated by the sun that they can melt the ice directly beneath the meteorite. Through this process, the hot meteorite creates a local depression in the ice and eventually disappears completely beneath the surface,” says Tollenaar.

Scientists have concluded that the only way to preserve most of the remaining meteorites in Antarctica in the long term is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.