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Scientists believe they have identified the vulnerable point of the Thwaites Glacier, a rapidly growing Antarctic colossus, which dumps billions of tons of ice into the ocean each year and raises water levels globally, the BBC reports.
Now a team from Britain and the US has studied the deep channels on the seafloor, facing the glacier, through which hot water seeps into the bottom of the glacier, accelerating its melting.
“These canals have not been mapped in as much detail so far, and we have found that they are actually much larger than previously thought: up to 600m deep, up to six soccer fields side by side,” said the Dr. Kelly Hogan from British Antarctic. Survey (BAS).
“And because they are so deep and so wide, this causes a lot more water to reach the Thwaites and melt both the floating peak and the ice on the seabed,” he said.
Floating in West Antarctica, the Thwaites are almost as large as Great Britain.
Satellite tracking indicates that this glacier is melting at an accelerating rate.
In the 1990s, it lost just over 10 billion tons of ice a year. Today, the loss is more than 80 billion tons. It is believed that one of the causes of the thaw is the influx of relatively warm water brought by ocean currents.
Currently, Thwaites ice losses contribute about 4% to the annual rise in global sea level. If the entire glacier collapsed, sea and ocean levels would rise no less than 65 centimeters.
This is unlikely to happen in the short to medium term, but Thwaites is considered particularly vulnerable in the context of global warming, and scientists are trying to figure out exactly how quickly any change could occur.
Experts say Thwaites it is the most important glacier on the planet. Due to its size and the vulnerability found in recent years, it was called “the glacier of the Apocalypse.”
Web Editor: Monica Bonea
