The destruction of the Doomsday Glacier is accelerating. What you need to know

Scientists believe that the Antarctic Thwaites Glacier, also called the Doomsday Glacier, will lose as much mass per year by 2067 as the entire Antarctic ice sheet is currently losing. In the future, this may lead to an increase in the level of the world's oceans and a change in coastlines. Why scientists are interested in the Doomsday Glacier and what is being done to save it is in the Izvestia article.

What is the Doomsday Glacier?

• Thwaites Glacier, named after glacial geologist and geomorphologist Frederick T. Thwaites, is located on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Its area is 192 thousand square kilometers, which is comparable to the size of the Sverdlovsk region (194.3 thousand square kilometers), and the thickness of the ice reaches 4 thousand meters.

• Scientists have estimated that the melting of this glacier alone could raise global sea levels by 65 cm, which could lead to flooding of coastal areas of China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Nigeria and the United States, salinization of groundwater in these countries, and make part of the islands uninhabitable. Because of the possible catastrophic consequences of the melting of the glacier, the Thwaites glacier was called the Doomsday Glacier in the press (we talked about the catastrophe predicted by the Doomsday clock here).

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• Thwaites Glacier, together with the neighboring Pine Island Glacier, form a barrier preventing the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which scientists consider more vulnerable to changes in annual average temperature. The destruction and melting of this ice sheet can lead to an increase in the level of the World Ocean by 3.3 m.

Exploring the Thwaites Glacier

• The Thwaites Glacier was first discovered during Richard Byrd's expedition in 1940, but initially did not attract the attention of scientists. In the 1980s, researchers assumed, based on Landsat satellite imagery, that the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers were increasing in size. It was only after the introduction of radar interferometry that they were able to see the deformation of the ice. This revealed that Thwaites Glacier is changing faster than all other glaciers in Antarctica. Tracking these changes allows us to study the mechanisms of glacier destruction and assess possible risks for coastal areas.

• Under the influence of gravity, the Thwaites Glacier gradually slides into the sea, and thins there under the influence of warm ocean currents. This part of the glacier protruding into Pine Island Bay in the Amundsen Sea is called the tongue. Over the course of a year, the "tongue" of the Doomsday Glacier grows by an average of more than 2 km. Due to these changes, the ice mass collapses and icebergs appear. Scientists estimate that the rate of ice loss by the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers has doubled over the past 30 years.

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• In 2002, an iceberg with an area of more than 5.5 thousand square kilometers broke off from the Thwaites Glacier — it was named B-22A. Its peculiarity is that instead of drifting, it ran aground and actually slowed down the sliding of the Thwaites Glacier into the sea for 20 years, shifting during this period. by only 100 km and lost about 2 square kilometers of area. Now the B-22A is drifting into the open sea — in 2022-2023, satellites recorded that in less than six months the iceberg overcame 175 km.

Is Judgment Day near?

• The risk of collapse and melting of the Thwaites Glacier is caused not only by the displacement and thinning of its "tongue" under the influence of warm currents, but also by the destruction of the base of the glacier, which is eroded by the same currents. The researchers found that the base of the glacier is shifting inland, which will lead to the sliding of even larger ice masses into the sea and an increase in water levels in the oceans.

• Glacier changes are predicted using computer modeling, but the conclusions are ambiguous. In 2023, a computer model predicted that the Doomsday ice shelf would eventually collapse into the sea under the influence of warm currents, and a later study in 2024 showed that the Thwaites ice cliffs could be stable enough to avoid such a scenario.

• Previously, scientists assumed that the Doomsday glacier could melt within decades, but now they believe that it will take centuries. The reasons for the melting of the glacier are also ambiguous. While it was previously claimed that human activity and greenhouse gas emissions were responsible for the destruction of glaciers, recent studies have shown that the destruction of Thwaites could have been caused, among other things, by geological activity in the earth's crust.

• Despite the fact that not all the predictions of scientists who studied the Doomsday Glacier turned out to be reliable, the scientific community is alarmed by the changes taking place in Antarctica. Teams from foreign universities have launched the Seabed Anchored Curtain Project initiative, designing the construction of a flexible underwater wall that will protect Thwaites Glacier from warm underwater currents. In this way, the initiators of the project expect to gain time until the moment when global efforts to reduce emissions begin to take effect. But the researchers of the Thwaites Glacier note that it reacted very slowly to climate change, which means that measures to save the glacier will not give a quick result either.