“What is attention-getting about Thwaites is that the change will proceed with fairly dramatic, measurable results within the next few decades,” Scambos told CNN.įor now, the glacier is being held back by a critical floating ice shelf. If the Thwaites collapsed, the event could raise sea levels by several feet, researchers say, putting coastal communities as well as low-lying island nations further at risk.īut Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a leader of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, said it will still be decades before the world will see real acceleration and an additional uptick in sea level rise. The fall of the ice shelf could bring the impending collapse of Antarctica’s critical glacier. ![]() The glacier, which equals the size of Florida or Great Britain, already accounts for about 4% of annual global sea level rise, loses roughly 50 billion tons of ice each year, and is becoming highly vulnerable to the climate crisis. It has dumped billions of tons of ice into the sea, and its demise could lead to irreversible changes throughout the planet. ![]() Satellite images taken as recently as last month, which researchers presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union Monday, suggest the critical ice shelf keeping together the Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica - an important defense against global sea level rise - could shatter within the next three to five years.Īntarctica’s Thwaites glacier is known as the “Doomsday glacier,” due to the serious risk it poses during its melting process. ![]() As the rapidly heating planet alters the landscape of the Arctic region up north, scientists have discovered disturbing and alarming signs at the southern end of the planet, particularly in one of the ice shelves safeguarding the Antarctic’s so-called “Doomsday glacier.”
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