- A new study says a body of ice known as the “doomsday glacier” could be melting faster than expected.
- The Thwaites Glacier protects the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and researchers are keeping a close eye on it.
- New underwater surveys show it melted much faster than previously known.
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A body of Antarctic ice dubbed the ‘doomsday glacier’ could be melting much faster than previously expected and is holding on ‘by its fingernails’, according to new scientific research.
Melting of Thwaites Glacier, which is the size of Florida, and its surrounding ice basins could raise sea levels by 3 to 10 feet. It is this, and the fact that it acts as a buffer between warming seas and the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet, that gives it its ominous nickname.
A 10-foot rise in sea level would result in the loss of 28,800 square miles of U.S. land, potentially displacing 12.3 million people, Climate Central reported. At the time of this report, the time frame for such an increase was more than 200 years.
However, the new study, led by the University of South Florida (USF), found that Thwaites Glacier has been melting much faster in recent centuries than has been observed in recent years, the which means that a similar rapid pace of withdrawal could be triggered in the future. .
A 3D view of multibeam bathymetry (shape of the seafloor) colored by depth, collected by Rán across a seafloor ridge, just in front of the Thwaites Ice Shelf. Alastair Graham/University of South Florida
Researchers learned this by using underwater drones to map the seafloor beneath the glacier for the first time. The ridges they mapped are “like a footprint” that shows where the base of the glacier previously sat, according to the press release.
It shows that at some point in the last 200 years it had contracted twice as fast as it has seen in recent years, according to the statement.
“Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes on small time scales in the future, even from year to year, once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in his bed,” said Dr. Robert. Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey who authored the study.
Alastair Graham, the USF marine geophysicist who led the study, said, “Just a small kick in Thwaites could lead to a big response.”
Rán, a Kongsberg HUGIN autonomous underwater vehicle, in the sea ice in front of the Thwaites Glacier, after a 20-hour mission to map the seabed. Anna Wåhlin/University of Gothenburg
Thwaites’ melt rate was previously mapped using satellite imagery.
In 2020, a study of these images found that Thwaites, and neighboring Pine Island Glacier, were breaking off faster than even then believed, as Insider’s Susie Neilson reported.
Thwaites has been partly protected by an ice shelf that scientists have seen rapidly deteriorating. In December last year, scientists predicted that this shelf is about to melt within five years.