![ice sheet afloat ice sheet afloat](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/e2/f2/1ee2f255107e4ce2396dff6689297ea9.jpg)
But without a better understanding of the glacier’s past, present, and potential futures, it’s difficult to tell how the entire WAIS might respond to changes in Thwaites. In short, as important as Thwaites is individually, it may also be a linchpin for accelerated ice sheet collapse and melting on a much broader scale. Given its position amid the WAIS, were Thwaites to disappear, it could also hasten the demise of surrounding parts of the ice sheet that it helps buttress. Moreover, airborne and satellite observations have revealed that a huge cavity-two thirds the size of Manhattan Island and roughly 300 meters tall-is forming beneath the glacier, vacating a volume within the past 3 years that would have held 14 billion tons of ice. It already contributes roughly 4% to the global sea level rise rate, currently 3.4 millimeters per year, and recent simulations suggest that it could start collapsing very quickly, within as little as 200 years, potentially adding at least 1 additional millimeter every year. Get the most fascinating science news stories of the week in your inbox every Friday.Īs important as Thwaites is individually, it may also be a linchpin for accelerated ice sheet collapse and melting on a much broader scale.ĭespite its remoteness, researchers have flagged Thwaites as a scientific priority. “Both nations felt like they had to team up in order to be able to put the kinds of resources…and the amount of equipment and gear and fuel that are needed to really explore this very large but very remote glacier in Antarctica,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colo., and lead American scientific coordinator for the ITGC. Getting to these sites requires a 4-day trip by boat or several hours of flight and refueling stops from either of these outposts. Research sites on Thwaites are more than 1,600 kilometers from the United States Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station and the British Rothera Research Station. Situated at the center of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ( WAIS), a gigantic ice mass slightly larger than the state of Alaska, the glacier stretches from hundreds of kilometers inland to the seaward edge of the ice sheet, where it discharges icebergs and meltwater.
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Sledges carry scientific equipment as well as food, tents, clothing, and emergency gear for the Geological History Constraints on the Magnitude of Grounding-Line Retreat in the Thwaites Glacier System (GHC) project on 25 December 2019 during a full camp move across the ice near Mount Moses in the Hudson Mountains. This information will allow scientists to build improved models of Thwaites’s future evolution and its likely impact on sea level rise, key tools for future mitigation and adaptation efforts. Using data collected through the collaboration, hundreds of researchers will look at Thwaites from numerous angles, studying the ice, the surrounding ocean and atmosphere, and the bedrock beneath the glacier.
![ice sheet afloat ice sheet afloat](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/222871main_ice_field_226.jpg)
National Science Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council, is to diagnose the glacier’s health and learn more about its history. The goal of the ITGC, funded with roughly $50 million from the U.S. research initiative called the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration ( ITGC), which got under way in late 2018 and is now completing its second of four austral summer field seasons. But the details of why Thwaites is losing ice so fast, and what this loss might portend for West Antarctica-and for communities around the world forced to confront rising seas-are unclear.Īnswering these questions is a core motivation for scientists participating in a multiyear U.S.–U.K. As with other glaciers and ice sheets worldwide, the increased melting at Thwaites is largely a response to rising air and water temperatures.
![ice sheet afloat ice sheet afloat](https://sealevel.nasa.gov/system/news_items/main_images/47_ICESat-2-768.jpg)
Covering about 190,000 square kilometers, larger than the state of Florida, Thwaites is one of the most expansive glaciers on the continent and holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than half a meter. Thwaites is a tongue of frozen water that flows from West Antarctica through a passage about 120 kilometers wide into the Amundsen Sea. And in January, scientists confirmed a dire prediction: The water underneath the glacier is currently two degrees above the freezing point. In fact, it is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in Antarctica, melting at roughly twice the rate it did in the mid-1990s.