Ice flows from the vast Thwits Glacier in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica, accounting for about%% of global sea-level, and scientists say it is very sensitive to climate change.
Over the past three decades, the rate of ice loss from thwats, which is about the size of Great Britain or the US state of Florida, and its neighboring glaciers, has increased more than fivefold.
If Twitt falls it could lead to an increase in sea level around 25 inches (64 centimeters) – and researchers are trying to figure out how soon this is likely to happen.
Scientists from the International Thwits Glacier Cooperation (ITGC) have flown over the glacier in a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) twin-aisle aircraft and traveled to the U.S. Antarctic Program Icebreaker RV
The cavity hidden under the ice shelf is likely to be the passage through which warm ocean water goes to the grounding line beneath the ice shelf, they said.
BAS aero-geophysicist Dr. Tom, who led the aeronautical survey. Tom Jordan told CNN that the Thwits Glacier itself is probably the most significant glacier in West Antarctica, because it is so large, as we can see that it is changing today.
“And also, we know that his bed goes down, and he goes deep under the ice sheet and gets deep, which means that, theoretically, you can get a process called instability of the sea ice sheet. And once he It will start to retreat, just keep retreating. “
Jordan said the next step was to include data from the channels, some of them 2,600 feet (800 meters) deep, in line with how the ice sheet would react in the future.
Earlier, he said, the ITGC could not definitively support sea-level rise in West Antarctica “because there was a lot of uncertainty about understanding the ice sheet processes and how glaciers would react over time.”
“I think this is a big step towards helping him understand,” he added.
Jordan said suggestions for geoengineering and blocking channels are not logically possible at such a remote site. One simple solution is to “tackle climate change.”
“In the end, we will be able to tell governments and policymakers, this is what is going to happen … we will have a really accurate and limited estimate of what is going to happen to the Thaits Glacier,” Jordan said. .
Once scientists can demonstrate the expected sea-level rise in West Antarctica, he said, they will have more evidence than they call for action to reduce climate change.
The team collected data from January to March 2019 from glaciers and nearby Dotson and Crossan ice shelves. In early 2019, exceptional sea-ice icebreakers enabled surveying more than 2,000 square kilometers of sea floor on the glacier’s ice front.
The surveyed area was hidden beneath a shelf of floating ice sheets from the Thwaites Glacier, which collapsed in 2002, and could later become rare due to the thick sea-ice.
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