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The Thwaites Glacier, an ice formation the size of Florida, can change the world. And the latest research shows that some of its most vulnerable spots are in greater danger than previously thought ...
Although the glacier is replenished through snowfall, and glaciers generally accumulate more snow than they lose, the Thwaites Glacier is losing around 50 billion tons more ice than it is ...
Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse.
At 120 km (75 mi) in width, [2] Thwaites Glacier is the single widest glacier in the world, and it has an area of 192,000 km 2 (74,000 sq mi). This makes it larger than the American state of Florida (170,000 km 2 (66,000 sq mi)), and a little smaller than the entire island of Great Britain (209,000 square kilometres (81,000 square miles)).
The Thwaites Ice Shelf is one of the biggest ice shelves in West Antarctica, though it is highly unstable and disintegrating rapidly. [2] [3] Since the 1980s, the Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the "Doomsday glacier", [4] has had a net loss of over 600 billion tons of ice, though pinning of the Thwaites Ice Shelf has served to slow the process. [5]
A proposed "underwater sill" blocking 50% of warm water flows heading for the glacier could have the potential to delay its collapse and the resultant sea level rise by many centuries. [103] Some engineering interventions have been proposed for Thwaites Glacier and the nearby Pine Island Glacier to physically stabilize its ice or to preserve it ...
"The Thwaites is pretty much doomed." The findings are the culmination of six years of research conducted by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a collective of more than 100 scientists.
An Antarctic glacier the size of Florida is on the verge of collapse, scientists with the American Geophysical Union warned Monday, a nightmare scenario made worse by climate change that could ...