One of the world’s most unstable glaciers could be reaching its breaking point, and the aftermath of its collapse could have a major impact on coastal communities around the world.
A new study has revealed that the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is getting far more exposure to warm ocean water than previously thought.
“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 led the study, told USA Today.
“It’s kind of sending a shock wave down our spine to see that water moving kilometers.”
Called the “Doomsday Glacier,” its demise could cause global sea levels to rise by as much as two feet, and according to Rignot’s team, the glacier is melting more than six times faster than it did in the 1980s.
While the full melting of the glacier could take hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the ice shelf’s melting could cause a potentially irreversible retreat of the glacier if it continues more rapidly than previously expected. And that could happen in the next five years.
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At 74,000 square miles, the Thwaites Glacier is around the same size as the state of Florida.
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