“Doomsday Glacier” is losing ice faster than in the last 5,500 years: catastrophic forecast

It is in Antarctica and is known as “The doomsday glacier”. The news is alarming: it is losing ice at the fastest rate of the last 5,500 yearsraising concerns about the future of the ice sheet and the possibility of a catastrophic sea level rise caused by the melting of the frozen continent.

A report on the site life sciences details that the find comes from a study of prehistoric marine deposits found on the coasts surrounding the “doomsday” of Thwaites Glacier and nearby Pine Island Glacierboth located on the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The chilling part of the news is that climate change-driven melting of Antarctica’s glaciers is advancing faster than ever in recorded history, the researchers report June 9 in the journal. Geosciences of nature.

“These currently high rates of ice melt may indicate that those vital arteries in the heart of the West Antarctic ice sheet have ruptured, leading to an accelerated flow into the potentially disastrous ocean for the future global sea level in a warming world, ”lead author Dylan Rood, an Earth scientist at Imperial College London, said in a statement.

Glacier and Apocalypse

Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, it is the largest on earthwith an extension of about 120 kilometers and a depth between 800 and 1,200 meters in its contact line, where the glacier transforms from a mass of ice attached to the mainland to a floating ice shelf in the Amundsen Sea.

Thwaites is known as the “Doomsday Glacier” as its collapse could be triggered a cascade of glacial collapses in Antarcticaand the latest research on the frozen continent suggests that doomsday may come sooner than expected.

Since the 80s, Thwaites is estimated to have lost 595 billion tons of icecontributing, henceforth alone, to the annual rise in sea level around the world.

The rate of ice loss from the glacier has greatly accelerated over the past three decades due to hidden rivers of warm seawater flowing through the glacier’s bottom and climate change that warms the air and ocean.

Additionally, this bottom-up melting weakens glaciers and makes them more prone to surface fractures, which could spread throughout the ice sheet and potentially cause them to rupture. If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet were to break away and melt into the sea, global sea level would rise by about 3.4 meters.

A matter of years?

A third of the Thwaites Glacier, along its eastern side, flows more slowly than the rest, as it is “contained” by a floating ice shelf, an “undersea mountain” that slows its flow. However, this “seat belt” “won’t last long,” says Erin Petitt, an associate professor at Oregon State University.

Deep down, warmer ocean water circulating beneath the floating eastern side is attacking this glacier from all angles, his team found. “This phenomenon is melting the ice directly from below and, in doing so, the glacier loses its grip on the seamount. Huge fractures have formed and are growing, accelerating their disappearance,” says Pettit. “Probably this floating extension of the Thwaites Glacier it will only survive a few more years “.