PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Ever heard of the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica? Like the grand majority of us, probably not. But you will soon enough, and you probably won't like the reason why.
Listen to the full KYW Newsradio In Depth podcast about the Thwaites Glacier below.
It's massive, it's collapsing due to global warming, and when it goes, sea levels are going to rise by a significant amount, perhaps by 10 feet.
"All signs point to (the eventuality that) we're not going to keep this glacier from collapsing," said Villanova University Vice President, Chief Research Officer, and Chemistry Professor Amanda Grannas about the glacier that she said is about the size of Florida.
"Part of the weights actually extends out over the ocean. So part of the ice is floating on top of the ocean water, and part of it's located over land."
Dr. Grannas said ice shelves on the continent help keep the massive weight of such glaciers from flowing into the ocean.
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"If our ice shelf...goes away, then that opens the door for that ice that's behind it, that's over the land, to more freely flow out into the ocean. And that means catastrophic sea-level rise if that were to happen."
She said that the Thwaites Glacier serves that purpose, but it has been deteriorating for 20 years, "much more quickly than we had anticipated."
Dr. Grannas says climate change is a critical reason.
"Climate change is causing the ocean water to warm, and part of the issue is that it's melting the glacier from beneath," she said.
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"The water that kind of goes under this glacier, it's melting it and destabilizing it. And then there are these big cracks that are forming...much more quickly than they were, say five, 10, 20 years ago."
She said that in the best-case scenario, it will cause at last two feet of sea-level rise, but a larger question arises.
"The bigger unknown question is how and how long it's going to take that West Antarctic Ice Sheet ice to come behind it," she said.
"10 feet of sea level rise...could be caused by that."
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Dr. Grannas added that such a huge sea level rise is maybe 50 or 100 or more years out, but two feet of sea-level rise from the glacier is "probably within our lifetime."
"That's going to change our coastlines," she said. "It's going to change our infrastructure...we're gonna have to figure out how to deal with that."
Dr. Grannas further discussed how we can perhaps mitigate and slow "what looks to be an impending unavoidable rising sea level," and create new ways of adjusting everything from environmental policy to resetting infrastructure and trade. You can listen to the full conversation with Dr. Grannas below, and many others for free right now. Just look for 'KYW Newsradio In Depth' wherever you get your podcasts.
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