Thwaites Glacier is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms.
Antarctica’s so-called ‘fatal glacier’ – so named because of its high risk of collapsing and causing global sea levels to rise – may retreat rapidly in the coming decades, scientists warn, heightening concerns about the possibility of an extreme rise of sea level.
The glacier Thwaites is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists mapped the glacier’s historical retreat, hoping to learn from the past what the glacier will do in the future.
They found that sometime in the last two centuries, the base of the glacier moved away from the seabed at a rate of 2.1 kilometers per year. That’s twice as fast as scientists have observed in the past decade.
This rapid decay probably occurred “by the middle of the 20th century,” said Alastair Graham, the study’s lead author and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida.
This means that the ice cap is in danger of collapsing rapidly in the near future, once it recedes beyond a ridge of seafloor that helps keep it stable.
“Thwaites is really holding on today, and we should expect to see big changes over short periods of time in the future – even from year to year – when the glacier retreats past a shallow ridge,” said Robert Larter, marine geophysicist and one of the authors of the study from the British Antarctic Survey.
Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the largest on Earth. Its size is larger than the area of ​​the state of Florida.
As the climate crisis has accelerated, this region is being watched closely because of its rapid melting and capacity for widespread coastal destruction.
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