‘Swinging on the Edge’: Scientists Warn of Rapid Melting of Antarctic ‘Doomsday Glacier’

Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is considered by many climate scientists to be one of the world’s most vulnerable and most important glaciers in terms of future sea level rise in the world.

Their collapse would raise the sea level by more than half a meter on its own, and would later release other major ice bodies in West Antarctica, which together could raise the sea level by 2-3 meters. The ramifications for many countries, including most of the world’s coastal cities, would be catastrophic.

For this reason, Thwaites is known as the “Doomsday Glacier” of Antarctica.

Earlier this year, a team of scientists observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point below the glacier, helping to explain the reason behind its decline.

The Thwaites Glacier is 74,000 square miles, about the size of the United Kingdom. Melting ice draining from Thwaites into the Amundsen Sea already accounts for 4 percent of global sea level rise, but scientists are concerned that its continued existence will sway as the world warms.

“The big question is how fast it becomes unstable. It seems to be on the edge, “said Paul Cutler, director of the Antarctic glaciology program at the National Science Foundation of the United States. Financial times this week.

“It is a cornerstone for the other glaciers around it in West Antarctica,” he said. “If you remove it, another ice will potentially begin to drain into the ocean as well.”

Rob Larter, UK principal investigator for the Thwaites Glacier Project at the British Antarctic Survey, added: “It is the most vulnerable place in Antarctica.”

Antarctica represents large amounts of ice, about 90 percent of all ice in the world, and unlike the Arctic, most of the ice is out of water and on land. The average thickness of the ice is 1.6 miles deep. At its thickest point, the ice cap is nearly three miles deep.

The current sea level is about 20 cm (almost 8 inches) above pre-industrial levels and is credited with increasing coastal flooding.

For about 2,000 years until the late 1800s, global sea levels remained almost static with small fluctuations.

Fossil fuel burning increased during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gas absorbs heat from the sun and traps it, heating the atmosphere and the planet.

Our rapidly warming planet causes sea levels to rise on two fronts. Warmer temperatures melt ice sheets and glaciers, causing runoff to flow into the oceans. The ocean also absorbs excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, and hot water expands, taking up more space than colder water.

The annual rate of sea level rise has roughly doubled since 1990.

Scientists previously found that the extent of Antarctic ice sheet instability is difficult to study, but improved technologies are allowing a better understanding of changes in ice on and around the continent.

In January, a probe designed to search for extraterrestrial life on Jupiter’s moon Europa was tested by scientists working on Thwaites.

The cylindrical robot was lowered through a 600m deep hole only 35cm in diameter to measure the waters moving below the glacier’s surface.

He measured the temperatures and also the turbulence of the water, a means of testing the mixture of fresh water from the glacier and salty water from the ocean. The turbulence allows scientists to understand the melting speed and therefore the overall stability of the glacier.

The latest warning about Antarctic glacier melt comes amid a record heat wave on the other side of the planet in the Arctic.

Both the Antarctic and Arctic regions are warming faster than the rest of the world, but temperatures in the Arctic have reached record levels, with an alarming record high of 38 ° C in Siberia in June.

High temperatures have fueled hundreds of forest fires and Russian authorities have declared emergency situations in seven regions.