Florida-Sized Glacier "Holding on by Its Fingernails"
upstart writes:
Florida-Sized 'Doomsday Glacier' In Antarctica May Slip Into The Ocean More Quickly:
'Doomsday Glacier' is Teetering Even Closer to Disaster Than Scientists ThoughtWhen measured across geological timescales that span eons, it's fair to say the massive Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is in the midst of a collapse. Now new data drawn from the seafloor suggests that it could retreat even faster than previously thought, leading to dramatic impacts on global sea levels.
If the entirety of the Florida-sized ice sheet and some surrounding ice were to slide into the ocean, it could raise sea levels by three to ten feet spelling potential devastation for a number of coastal communities worldwide.
For context, we've seen less than a foot of sea level rise over the past three decades, and that's been enough to increase flooding in a number of places. The worst case scenario were we to lose the Thwaites would redraw coastline maps around the world.
upstart writes:
Researchers say the icy mass is "holding on by its fingernails":
Underwater robots that peered under Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the "Doomsday Glacier," saw that its doom may come sooner than expected with an extreme spike in ice loss. A detailed map of the seafloor surrounding the icy behemoth has revealed that the glacier underwent periods of rapid retreat within the last few centuries, which could be triggered again through melt driven by climate change.
[...] The Thwaites Glacier extends well below the ocean's surface and is held in place by jagged points on the seafloor that slow the glacier's slide into the water. Sections of seafloor that grab hold of a glacier's underbelly are known as "grounding points," and play a key role in how quickly a glacier can retreat.
In the new study, an international team of researchers used an underwater robot to map out one of Thwaites' past grounding points: a protruding seafloor ridge known as "the bump," which is around 2,133 feet (650 m) below the surface. The resulting map revealed that at some point during the last two centuries, when the bump was propping up Thwaites Glacier, the glacier's ice mass retreated more than twice as fast as it does now.
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