WARMING SEAS ARE CARVING INTO MASSIVE ANTARCTIC GLACIER THAT COULD TRIGGER SEA LEVEL RISE ~ The Washington Post

New research provides a startling and unprecedented look at how warmer oceans, driven by climate change, are gouging Thwaites Glacier. West Antarctica, and 10 feet of sea level rise, could ultimately be at stake.

By Chris Mooney

February 15, 2023

Rapidly warming oceans are cutting into the underside of the Earth’s widest glacier and posing a major sea-level-rise threat, startling new data and images show.

Using an underwater robot at Thwaites Glacier, researchers have determined that warm water is getting channeled into crevasses in what the researchers called “terraces” — essentially, upside-down trenches — and carving out gaps under the ice. As the ice then flows toward the sea, these channels enlarge and become future potential break points, where the floating ice shelf comes apart and produces huge icebergs.

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Warm water carves underwater crevasses into glacier.

Underwater video taken of the Thwaites Glacier in Antartica in January 2020 shows carvings of potential break points beneath the glacier. (Video: International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration)

The results from overlapping teams of more than two dozen scientists, published Wednesday in two papers in the journal Nature, reveal the extent to which human-caused warming could destabilize glaciers in West Antarctica that could ultimately raise global sea level by 10 feet if they disintegrate over the coming centuries.

Scientists with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a historic scientific collaboration organized by the United States and the United Kingdom, arrived at one of the safest spots to land on the West Antarctic behemoth in 2019 and 2020, and used hot water to drill through nearly 2,000 feet of ice to the ocean below.

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