The Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica is one of the fastest-changing glaciers in the world.
Alongside its neighbour, the Thwaites glacier, it is responsible for almost half the sea level rise caused by melting ice sheets in Antarctica.
Scientists know the West Antarctic ice sheet – which includes Thwaites and Pine Island – is retreating because of warm water eroding the ice sheet from below.
But the extent to which this process has been driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to natural variations to the Earth’s climate, remains unknown.
Our study, published in the Cryosphere, looks at how human-caused warming has contributed to the retreat of the Pine Island glacier since pre-industrial times.
