something that puts your existence at risk

A new study has discovered warm water infiltrating beneath the vast Antarctic ice sheet.

Its nickname is usually translated as “Doomsday Glacier” or “end of the world”. This is the name (doomsday glacier) refers to its size and environmental significance: it is estimated that if 258,000 km³ of ice above the waterline melted, sea levels could rise by 65 cm.

We now know the main threat facing the Thwaites Glacier.

Warm waters. A new study has revealed an alarming leak of water into Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. This is warm sea water flowing under high pressure through the base of this glacier.

This is worrying because it could mean the glacier is melting faster than we thought. “The concern is that we are underestimating the rate at which the glacier is changing, which will have devastating consequences for coastal communities around the world,” explained Christine Dow, co-author of the study, in a press release.

Huge glacier. The size of this glacier is also a concern. Its area (192,000 km²) is similar to or about the same as Senegal, more than twice that of the Autonomous Community of Castile and Leon. It is located on the northern coast of West Antarctica and its volume is 483,000 km³.

Some of this volume is underwater, but almost half is on the surface. This means that if the snow and ice from this glacier melt and flow into the ocean, sea levels will rise. The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration estimates more than half a meter.

Stormy thaw. So the water intrusions found in the glacier are bad news because of the “active melting” they imply, according to the team responsible for the work.

They explain that these penetrations may be caused by the influence of tides on glacial ice. These tides push large amounts of warm water under the ice cover. This causes the glacier ice to melt and release fresh water into the sea, which mixes with the less saline water of the glacier.

In this way, a network of underwater channels is created in the ice. A network that gradually grows with each tide.

Looking under the cloak. We have known about the importance of this glacier for many years. If news of it arrives little by little, it is because (partly due to its size) its study is very difficult. In this case, the team responsible for the discovery used data from the InSAR tool (synthetic aperture radar interferometer)

This is one of the sensors on board the ICEYE satellites. These satellites orbit around the poles. Thanks to this sampling frequency, the team was able to observe the glacier at high resolution between March and June last year.

Details of the process and its results were published in a journal article. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

65 centimeters or more. The problem may be even more serious if you take two things into account. On the one hand, the disappearance of the Thwaites Glacier could mean more than just the arrival of its enormous volume of ice and snow into the ocean. The glacier also acts as a plug for the surrounding Antarctic ice mass. If this glacier melts, it is likely that these masses will also reach the sea.

The second problem is that the phenomenon observed there could be happening in other polar glaciers around the world, not only in Antarctica, but also in places like Greenland. These are two regions where ice lies on land, suggesting a hypothetical net contribution to sea level if it melted.

In Hatak | We’ve just discovered the oldest glaciers in the world. Where: Beneath the great gold mines of South Africa.

Image | ICEYE/University of California, Irvine