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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 ...
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.
The new findings from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration add to a vast body of research on how the deterioration of glaciers worldwide could contribute to sea level rise.
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 ...
A glacier with a sustained negative balance loses equilibrium and retreats. A sustained positive balance is also out of equilibrium and will advance to reestablish equilibrium. Currently, nearly all glaciers have a negative mass balance and are retreating. [13] Glacier retreat results in the loss of the low-elevation region of the glacier.
Climate engineering (or geoengineering, climate intervention [1]) is the intentional large-scale alteration of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The term has been used as an umbrella term for both carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification when applied at a planetary scale.