Scientists issue worrying update about 'Doomsday' glacier that could have devastating effects

There's been a new update with the 'Doomsday glacier' and it's not looking good.

The Thwaites Glacier has the potential to be catastrophic for coastal communities worldwide as scientists have a fresh and worrying update for us.

Located in West Antartica is the ginormous slab of floating ice - around the size of Great Britain - which remains in rapid retreat.

According to new study, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, have determined that the warm water sat below the surface of the glacier is causing the rate of melting to increase more rapidly.

After using data from Finland’s ICEYE commercial satellite mission from March to June of 2023, they concluded that there might need to be a reassessment of global sea level projections.

The glacier has the potential to increase global sea levels to more than two feet if it melts completely, according to the study.

This find lead to flooding, loss of habitat, and increase in the number of storms.

Co-author Christine Dow, professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, told the University of California, Irvine: “Thwaites is the most unstable place in the Antarctic and contains the equivalent of 60 centimetres of sea level rise.

“The worry is that we are underestimating the speed that the glacier is changing, which would be devastating for coastal communities around the world.”

The Thwaites Glacier is around the size of the UK. (James Yungel/NASA)

“These ICEYE data provided a long-time series of daily observations closely conforming to tidal cycles,” lead author Eric Rignot, UC Irvine professor of Earth system science, added.

“In the past, we had some sporadically available data, and with just those few observations it was hard to figure out what was happening.

“When we have a continuous time series and compare that with the tidal cycle, we see the seawater coming in at high tide and receding and sometimes going farther up underneath the glacier and getting trapped.

“Thanks to ICEYE, we’re beginning to witness this tidal dynamic for the first time.

“There are places where the water is almost at the pressure of the overlying ice, so just a little more pressure is needed to push up the ice.

“The water is then squeezed enough to jack up a column of more than half a mile of ice.”

The West Antartica glacier remains in rapid retreat. (IceBridge/PA)

ICEYE Director of Analytics, Michael Wollersheim, credited the readily available resources and said: “Until now, some of the most dynamic processes in nature have been impossible to observe with sufficient detail or frequency to allow us to understand and model them.

“Observing these processes from space and using radar satellite images, which provide centimeter-level precision InSAR measurements at daily frequency, marks a significant leap forward.”

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