Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” is rapidly melting in unexpected ways, according to new research.
In 2019, a team of 13 US and British scientists from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration traveled to the glacier for about six weeks and used mooring data, sensors and an underwater robot vehicle known as Icefin to monitor the glacier.
Thwaites contributes to about 4% of annual sea level rise due to shedding billions of tons of ice into the ocean, according to researchers. Since the glacier acts as a dam to the surrounding ice in west Antarctica, if it melts and collapses, it could raise sea levels by up to 10 feet, oceanic researchers from Cornell and the British Antarctic Survey reported.
Meanwhile, “the glacier is still in trouble,” Peter Davis, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey and a lead author on the other paper, The studies’ authors claim the melting of these cracks “may become the primary trigger for ice shelf collapse.”
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