Mineral Rich Antarctica

 As Antarctica’s ice recedes, Mineral resources exposed

Mining is banned on the frozen continent. But new research suggests, it could change as ice melts and land and valuable minerals are exposed. The Transantarctic Mountains, which, along with sites on the Antarctic Peninsula, hold the most promising mineral deposits in Antarctica. Prospectors are scouring the Pacific Ocean seafloor and Greenland’s vast landscape for valuable minerals to run the world’s economy. Melting ice, rebounding land and rising seas will change what resources are available in Antarctica. A new analysis projects that as much as 120,610 square km's of new, ice-free land could emerge in Antarctica by 2300. A warming climate could expose a Pennsylvania-sized chunk of ice-free land in Antarctica, which could drastically reshape Antarctic geopolitics as well as the continent’s geography.

A new study finds that, as the climate continues to warm over the next decades, tens of thousands of square miles of Antarctica will lose their protective covering of ice, exposing valuable deposits of copper, iron, gold, silver, platinum and cobalt. A study published in Nature Climate Change is the first to incorporate glacial isostatic adjustment, how land beneath heavy ice sheets uplifts after the ice retreats, into projections of ice-free land emergence in Antarctica. The results reveal that climate change could expose potentially valuable mineral resources which may spur renegotiations of the international treaties that currently govern Antarctica. As more ice-free land emerges in Antarctica, said Erica Lucas, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, countries may become more interested in its mineral resource potential. Beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet lies a varied landscape with mountains, canyons, valleys and even volcanoes. As the climate warms, the ice sheet is slowly retreating, uncovering some of that land. But until now, projections of ice-free land emergence had considered only changes to ice margins, how the spatial extent of ice cover will shift. Simulations of Antarctica’s future accessible land hadn’t considered how land would uplift once uncovered by ice or how different sea level scenarios would affect the amount of ice-free land that might emerge.

Geologists have been exploring the frozen continent for more than a century, and climate scientists now have a better idea about which parts of Antarctica might be easier to access in the future. Nearly all of the continent is covered by either ice sheets or glaciers; however, some regions of Antarctica are warming twice as fast as the global average. “We are projecting how much ice-free land is going to emerge, and the relation of that ice-free land to the known mineral occurrences,” said Erica Lucas. Lucas’s projections included these factors by incorporating expected sea level changes, information about the thickness of Earth’s lithosphere and estimates of how the absence of the gravitational pull of an ice sheet would affect land uplift. The study estimated that 120,610 square km's (46,578 square miles), 36,381 square km's (14,047 square miles), and 149 square km's (58 square miles) of land would emerge by 2300 under high–, medium–, and low–ice melt conditions, respectively. “We know we’ve had ice retreat and grounding line retreat over the past couple of decades,” so the ranges of projected ice-free land emergence were not surprising, Lucas said.

An international treaty bans mining in Antarctica; however, nations can propose changes beginning in 2048. Dr. Lucas said that the study could help researchers understand the calls for mining which might arise in the future. Currently, less than 0.6% of Antarctica is estimated to be free of ice cover, including coastlines, mountain ranges, valleys and cliffs. Global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is changing that. Antarctic ice and glaciers have undergone rapid thinning and retreat over the past few decades, and that will continue, the study said. “We made these projections because we want to better understand if there’s going to be future calls for mineral resource development,” Dr. Lucas said. Within the area that Lucas and the research team projected would be ice-free by 2300 lie known or suspected deposits of critical minerals used in manufacturing and valuable metals in and of themselves. In particular, the study found the largest land emergence in Antarctica is likely to occur over territories claimed by Argentina, Chile and the UK and contains a range of mineral deposits.

Two regions of Antarctica hold the most promising mineral deposits: the 810-mile-long Antarctic Peninsula, which sticks up from the continent like a thumb toward the southern tip of South America; and the 2,000-mile-long Transantarctic Mountains that separate East and West Antarctica. The peninsula mountain range is claimed by Australia and New Zealand. All territorial claims on Antarctica were suspended by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and are not recognized by other nations. Currently, commercial mineral extraction is not allowed in Antarctica, though the Antarctic Treaty does allow for activities related to mineral resources if they are conducted strictly for scientific purposes. If mineral resources become simpler to extract, countries with territorial claims in Antarctica would have an incentive to renegotiate those terms. The first window for renegotiation is in 2048, when parties to the Antarctic Treaty are permitted to call for a review of the treaty’s environmental protocol. “The continent will still remain a very challenging environment for mineral resource extraction.” The changes to Antarctic land could put pressure on the region’s legal framework surrounding mineral resource activities. “That’s a fair assessment,” wrote Tim Stephens, a professor of  international law at the University of Sydney Law School who was not involved in the new study. “However, the ice-free land emergence projected by the new study is unlikely to trigger a major change to Antarctic governance on its own,” he wrote. “The continent will still remain a very challenging environment for mineral resource extraction,” he wrote, adding that the transformation of the Antarctic environment could also spur greater cooperation and focus on the environmental protection objectives of the Antarctic Treaty.

However, the study’s authors predict that as more land is exposed, countries will begin to advocate mining. The study examined several future scenarios to determine how much land would become free from ice, weighing global temperatures, rising sea levels along the coast and how much the land could rise once the ice melts and the weight of glaciers is removed. Under a moderate ice-melting scenario, about 14,000 square miles of Antarctica would be exposed by the year 2300, a figure which might increases to about 46,600 square miles under a high ice-melting scenario. The amount of ice that retreats depends on future greenhouse gas emissions, Dr. Lucas said. But she cautioned that there was uncertainty in some projections of ice melting beyond 2100. Average global temperatures are predicted to rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius, or 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100, according to Climate Action Tracker. The authors examined existing studies of mineral deposits and regions where, 180 million years ago, Antarctica was connected to Australia, Africa and South America as part of the supercontinent Gondwana. “We know that all of the other continents that bordered Antarctica during this time period have large mineral deposits,” Dr. Lucas said. “Because Antarctica is geologically similar to those continents, we can assume that there is likely also similar mineral deposits in Antarctica.” Rising global temperatures and retreating ice sheets would expose between 12 and 25 million metric tons of copper deposits on the Antarctic Peninsula. 

Global copper demand is currently at 28 million metric tons and is expected to jump to 42 million metric tons by 2040 as demand for electricity grows, according to a January report by S&P Global in New York. Tony Press, adjunct professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, said the methodology of the new study was “really interesting, and there’s going to be new areas of bare ground, which may or may not provide places for people to explore for minerals.” Dr. Press also cautioned that prospecting for minerals on a continent without seaports or roads would be difficult. Commercial mining requires cold weather to move mining vehicles across the land and over rivers, according to Dr. Press. “Climate change is going to change that, but you can’t actually predict how that’s going to be at the moment,” he said. Dr. Press also noted that global warming was causing more icebergs to break off from glaciers along the Antarctic coast, making the Southern Ocean more hazardous for ships. For now, Antarctica is protected from commercial development and open only to scientists and tourists. Current study was conducted to better understand the calls for mining which might arise in the future, not that the study could be used to guide future decisions about mining.