Who knew the zombie apocalypse would actually be the climate crisis? A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change warns that the undead that we should be worried about are not walking corpses, but actually floating blocks of ice that will inevitably melt. These “dead” sheets of ice, found largely off the coast of Greenland, possess the potential to raise sea levels by as much as 10.6 inches by the end of this century.
Let’s take a step back real quick and explain what zombie ice is, lest you be given the wrong idea that it can bite other glaciers and turn them, or something. “Zombie ice” refers to ice that is still attached to thicker glaciers, but is no longer receiving the snow it needs to replenish itself. Because it’s not getting the insulation of snow to protect or preserve it, the ice is basically doomed to “die,” or melt. Hence, zombie ice. It’s the walking dead of the Arctic, along with zombie fires that have also cropped up in the region in recent years, too.
