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    doomsday glacier

    Satellite imagery shows the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica on February 21, 2000. The ice shelf's collapse in 2002 was hastened by fossil fuel-driven global warming.

    Glaciologist Says New Melting Study 'Frankly Scary. Even to Me.'

    "Ice sheets are retreating fast today," said one expert. "But we see traces in the seafloor that the retreat could go faster, way faster, and this is a reminder that we have not seen everything yet."

    Kenny Stancil
    Apr 05, 2023

    Peer-reviewed research out Wednesday shows that parts of a huge ice sheet covering Eurasia retreated up to 2,000 feet per day at the end of the last ice age—by far the fastest rate measured to date.

    The new finding, published in the journal Nature, upends "what scientists previously thought were the upper speed limits for ice sheet retreat," The Washington Postreported, and it has sparked fears about "how quickly ice in Greenland and Antarctica could melt and raise global sea levels in today's warming world."

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    News
    glaciers
    Thwaites Glacier

    Ominous News From Deep Beneath Doomsday Glacier

    What researchers found is that weird stuff is going on down there that could speed up the day when Thwaites takes a swim.

    Juan Cole
    Feb 16, 2023

    The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica—the so-called "Doomsday Glacier"—is in the news again. We are fascinated with it because it is the Godzilla of glaciers, 80 miles across and as massive as Florida. If the ice sheet holding it back were to melt, and if Thwaites plopped into the ocean, it would all by itself raise sea level two feet. It functions, however, to hold back other glaciers and ice formations, which in its absence would themselves head for the sea. If that happened you would be talking about ten feet of sea level rise. The last time I discussed it, Alastair G.C. Graham had just shown that glaciers sometimes move very quickly. This finding has been widely accepted by scientists.

    B.E. Schmidt and colleagues write in a paper for Nature that scientists piloted an underwater vehicle beneath the ice shelf and the Thwaites glacier. Eat your heart out, James Cameron! They found that the glacier is melting a little slower than had been feared, but that since 2010 it has nevertheless shrunk consistently and fairly rapidly. Worse, much worse was their finding that there are big cracks in the glacier and terraced indentations from below that they call ‘staircase-like’ structures. These weak spots are exposed to relatively warm water, at a temperature of 2°C, i.e., 35.6°F, from beneath, and the glacier is melting especially rapidly at these weak hot points.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    doomsday glacier

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