The Doomsday Glacier: Thwaites is likely to melt even faster The world’s heating is showing no sign of slowing down, and the Thwaites Glacier — otherwise known as the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ — continues its inexorable slide toward disintegration.squeeze every last molecule in there. This unsettling progression is potentially dangerous for shoreline communities around the globe.
Alarming Retreat Of The Glacier
The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica has been in retreat for more than 80 years, but its rate of collapse is increasing. New research reveals that, like other tidewater glaciers in https://thehimalayantimes.com/guest-column/faster-melting-in-antarctic-glacier-new-research/The Himalayan region], the glacier will withdraw more extensively and at an accelerated pace on account of the tidal action exerted under its belly.
When the glacier lifts off the seabed and starts floating, the researchers observed, it opens up a bottleneck that allows water from the surrounding ocean – which is warm by Greenland standards – to drive deep under Helheim Glacier from where it basically grinds away at its underside. The process is now disturbing the layer of cold water which previously insulated the glacier, causing melting at the grounding zone — where the ice sheet on land meets bedrock.
This further melt could destabilize the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet, eventually causing its total collapse. And the Thwaites Glacier has been nicknamed “the cork in the bottle,” because its failure could lead to a tipping point that would cause 26 inches more of sea level rise. But scientists know that if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is completely lost, sea levels would rise by 10 feet.
Providing the Collapse: Katrinenamu had a Catastrophe ReferentialAction
The study also describes a ‘nightmare sequence’ of unstable ice cliffs up to 100 meters high at the edge of the glacier producing huge numbers of icebergs and causing a runaway retreat that has the potential to increase sea levels by several tens of centimeters within only a few decades.
Although the researchers caution that it is premature to predict whether such a collapse might actually occur, they point out that these models clearly indicate as catastrophic a fate for the Nation’s electricity grid as cascading failures. If we lose the Thwaites Glacier, it would send shockwaves through to coastal societies, as well as the world economy and ecosystem.
The findings really underscore a critical question for future work — whether or not that collapse of Thwaites Glacier has already begun in earnest. The Antarctic can gain some of the ice that it is loosing during heavy snowfalls, but the problem is that too much loss in happening and snow fails to replace quickly enough. While the global warming will eventually melt more snow on Antarctica, for a while this could result in even more Antarctic snow. But fairly rapidly this is expected to change to rain and surface melting on the ice, leading to a situation where the glacier is evaporating both from above and below.
Conclusion
The Thwaites Glacier, which has been labelled the ‘Doomsday Glacier’, is one of the most at-risk glaciers in Antarctica, because of its rapid melting rate. Tidal melting, driven by the edge of the vast ice sheet being eaten away at by warmer ocean water, would pose as risk for some 1.5 meters in this corner of West Antarctica if it is exposed directly to seawater a few times a century themodel suggests. This simple fact caustically increases sea levels around the world and could be enough to destabilize much larger portions of the entire ice mass. However, the message is crystal clear from the scientific consensus around this issue: not only is time of the essence to address climate change and prevent what could be catastrophic runaway global warming, but we must also take urgent action to protect our futures. Both as individuals and as a planet, we need to implement aggressive solutions that will begin reducing our greenhouse gas emissions while supporting the necessary sustainable practices to protect our shared home.
