Melting Doomsday glacier threatens to disappear coastal cities around the world

A joint international research team has found that one of the most remarkable glaciers in West Antarctica, the Thwaites River, is eroding at an unprecedented rate compared to previous decades, threatening coastal cities around the world.

Glaciers are huge masses of snow that move very slowly on the ground, forming in cold regions such as Antarctica and the Arctic and high in the mountains.

Historic collapse

To reach these results, which were published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the research team launched a modern robotic vehicle loaded with precise sensors during an expedition in the summer of 2019. In the summer, the temperature reduces the amounts of snow in the vicinity of the continent Antarctica, which enabled the spacecraft to dive for 20 hours and take pictures of 160 prominent mountain outcrops at the front of the glacier, which were submerged in the ocean.

According to the study, Thwaites during the past 200 years, and especially in the second half of the 20th century, was collapsing at twice the rate compared to its previous history for that period.

Accordingly, the researchers expect to monitor significant changes in the melting of the glacier during the next period of time, which indicates the need to monitor the river more intensively from now on.

Thwaites draws the attention of researchers because it is huge, almost twice as large as the Sinai Peninsula (University of South Florida)

mobile disaster

The Thwaites River draws the attention of researchers because it is huge, with an area almost twice the size of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, with a length of about 700 km. Quickly dissolve it from the bottom.

This represents a wide degree of danger, according to a press release issued by the University of South Florida participating in the study, the entire melting of this glacier could raise the sea level between 1 and 3 meters in full, and for this reason it was called the “Doomsday Glacier” ).

With greater research effort over the past two decades, the impact of global warming has been found to be affecting the massive glacier.

And in another study published last June in the same journal, it was found that Thwaites is melting at such rapid rates that it would contribute 3.4 meters to sea level rise worldwide, just over a period of several centuries.

That study found that during the past 5,000 years, that region of Antarctica did not experience the kind of melting that is happening now, due to global warming.