‘Doomsday Glacier’ shelf might collapse this 12 months sparking fears of giant sea stage rise
Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ ice shelf could collapse this year, triggering a countdown to a 26-inch sea level rise, experts warn
Antarctica’s notorious ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is teetering on the edge of a catastrophic collapse
Antarctica’s notorious “Doomsday Glacier” is teetering on the edge of a catastrophic collapse, with experts warning its entire defensive ice shelf could vanish before the end of the year. The colossal Thwaites Glacier is one of the biggest on the planet, stretching across an area roughly the size of Great Britain.
If the monster ice mass melts entirely, it has the potential to trigger a devastating 26-inch (65cm) spike in global sea levels, bringing absolute chaos to coastal communities worldwide. Scientists now fear the glacier’s floating natural barrier could completely disintegrate within months.
Known as the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS), the massive wall of ice acts like a dam on the glacier’s eastern side, blocking the rest of the ice from sliding into the ocean.
The crucial shield is a staggering 1,150 feet (350 metres) thick and spans 580 square miles (1,500 square kilometres) – making it about the size of Greater London.
But warming Southern Ocean currents are rapidly eating away at the frozen stronghold from underneath.
Dr Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, has issued a chilling warning that the shelf’s destruction is “very likely to happen sometime this year”.
While the total collapse of the entire Thwaites Glacier isn’t expected immediately, a wave of new studies indicates the TEIS is reaching its breaking point.
Speaking in an interview with Live Science, Dr Larter said: “The last bit of ice shelf in front of the glacier is poised to disintegrate. We don’t know quite how this ice shelf is going to break up, but it’s definitely going to go.”
The primary culprit behind the rapid decay is warm ocean water eroding the ice shelf from below. A recent drilling expedition right through the ice sheet confirmed that subsurface waters are heating up, directly driving the thinning process and rotting the structure from within.
Worse still, satellite imagery shows terrifying new fractures ripping through the ice shelf at an accelerating pace.
Crucially, the deep cracks are ripping along the “grounding line” – the exact zone where the floating ice shelf connects with the solid bedrock beneath.
It indicates a fundamental change in the structural physics deep inside the ice, with the shelf effectively ripping itself to shreds as it rams against the fixed point.
Dr Larter said: “It’s tearing away from the glacier at the moment, and its internal structure is getting more and more fragile. You can see the fractures and rifts growing in sequences of satellite images.”
The crisis has become so severe that Dr Larter told New Scientist that the British Antarctic Survey has already drafted an “obituary” press release ahead of the shelf’s inevitable demise.
If the TEIS shatters this year as predicted, many researchers fear it will trigger a domino effect across the rest of the Doomsday Glacier.
Without the ice sheet acting as a brake, some models predict the main glacier will rapidly accelerate its slide into the sea.
Ultimately, this could cause the entire glacier to collapse within decades or centuries, depending on the scientific models used.
Not every glaciologist is convinced that the loss of the eastern ice shelf will immediately trigger global Armageddon.
Dr Daniel Goldberg, an ice sheet specialist at the University of Edinburgh, agrees with Dr Larter that the TEIS is on its deathbed this year.
However, he told the Daily Mail that the disappearance of the Thwaites ice shelves might not trigger the terrifying acceleration that others fear and believes the wider threat to the entire glacier has been “a little overstated”.
