The call “Doomsday Glacier “Antarctica – dubbed because of its high risk of collapse and threat to global sea levels – has the potential to rapidly recede in the coming years, scientists say, amplifying concerns about the extreme sea level rise that will accompany its potential disappearance.
THE Thwaites Glacier , capable of raising sea levels by several meters, is melting along its undersea base as the planet warms. On a study Published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists mapped the glacier’s historic retreat, hoping to learn from its past what the glacier is likely to do in the future.
They found that at some point in the last two centuries, the glacier’s base shifted from the seafloor and retreated at a rate of 2.1 kilometers per year. That’s double the rate scientists have observed over the past decade.
This rapid disintegration possibly occurred “up to the mid-20th century,” Alastair Graham, lead author of the study and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida, said in a press release.
This suggests that Thwaites has the ability to experience a rapid pullback in the near future once this happens beyond a mountain range at the bottom of the sea that is helping to keep it under control.
“Thwaites is really holding on today ‘by the nails’, and we should expect big changes on small timescales in the future – even from one year to the next – when the glacier recedes beyond a shallow ridge in its bed,” Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist and a co-author of the British Antarctic Survey study, said in a statement.
The Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the widest on Earth and is larger than the state of Florida in the United States. But it’s only a fraction of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by up to 4.8 meters, according to NASA.
As the climate crisis accelerated, this region has been closely monitored because of its rapid melting and its capacity for widespread coastal destruction.
The Thwaites Glacier itself has worried scientists for decades. As early as 1973, researchers questioned whether she was at high risk of collapse. Nearly a decade later, they found that – because the glacier is grounded on the seafloor rather than on dry land – warm ocean currents can melt the glacier underneath, causing it to destabilize.
It was because of this research that scientists began calling the region around Thwaites “the weak point of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet”.
In the 21st century, researchers began documenting the glacier’s rapid retreat in an alarming series of studies.
In 2001, satellite data showed that the ground line was receding by about 1 kilometer per year. In 2020, scientists found evidence that warm water was actually flowing through the base of the glacier, melting it from below.
And then, in 2021, a study showed that the ice shelf, which helps to stabilize the glacier and prevent ice from flowing freely into the ocean, could break within five years.
“From the satellite data, we are seeing these large fractures spreading across the surface of the ice shelf, essentially weakening the ice tissue, a bit like a crack in the windshield,” Peter Davis, oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey told CNN in 2021. “It’s slowly spreading across the ice shelf and will eventually fracture into several different pieces.”
Monday’s findings, which suggest that Thwaites is capable of retreating at a much faster rate than recently thought, were documented in a 20-hour mission in extreme conditions that mapped an underwater area the size of Houston, according to a press release.
Graham said this survey “was truly a once-in-a-lifetime mission,” but that the team hopes to return soon to collect seafloor samples so they can determine when the previous rapid retreats occurred.
This could help scientists predict future changes to the “doomsday glacier”, which scientists had previously assumed would take time to change – something Graham said this study refutes.
“Just a little kick at Thwaites can lead to a big response,” Graham said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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