Doomsday glacier is more vulnerable than scientists thought: study

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is much more exposed to warm ocean water than scientists previously believed, according to a new study.

Dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” by scientists because its collapse could lead to a catastrophic rise in sea levels, the Thwaites could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts.

A new study, published Monday, conducted by scientists shows new evidence of “vigorous melting” of the glacier due to warm seawater flowing underneath it.

“The water is able to penetrate beneath the ice over much longer distances than we thought,” Eric Rignot, a University of California, Irvine, ice scientist, who helmed the study, told USA Today. “It’s kind of sending a shock wave down our spine to see that water moving kilometers.”

Rignot and his team previously documented how Antarctica is melting more than six times faster than it did in the 1980s.

Rignot said the process documented in his study — which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — will speed up the results of models that scientists use to predict future sea levels.

While the collapse of the glacier itself could take hundreds or thousands of years, the ice shelf could cause a retreat of the glacier which would be both unstable and possibly irreversible if it melts sooner.

“Thwaites is the most unstable place in the Antarctic and contains the equivalent of 60 centimeters (two feet) of sea-level rise,” said Christine Dow of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, who is the co-author of the study.

“The worry is that we are underestimating the speed that the glacier is changing, which would be devastating for coastal communities around the world.”

Rignot and his research team used high-resolution satellite radar data to find evidence of the warm water having access to the glacier.

A 2021 study said the ice shelf could collapse within the next five years — while scientists said in 2022 that Thwaites is hanging on “by its fingernails.”

The Thwaites Glacier is one of the world’s fastest-changing glaciers and recognized as one of the most unstable.

The Thwaites Glacier — roughly the size of Florida at a staggering 74,000 square miles — extends to a depth of about 2,600 to 3,900 feet at its grounding line.