‘Really, Really Bad’: Scientists Raise Alarm Over Warm Ocean Water Beneath ‘Doomsday Glacier’ in Antarctica – Common Dreams

A look by British and American scientists published that a vast sheet of ice known because the “doomsday glacier” is melting faster than experts beforehand believed—edging the world closer to a likely sea level rise of additional than 10 toes.

Researchers at New York College and the British Antarctic Search drilled through almost 2,000 toes of ice in the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica, to measure temperatures on the 75-mile huge ice sheet’s “grounding line,” the set the ice meets the ocean.

The water correct under the ice used to be stumbled on to be 32º Fahrenheit—extra than 2º above freezing temperature in the Antarctic position.

The findings absorb “spacious implications for world sea level rise,” NYU scientist David Holland stated in a assertion.

350.org co-founder and writer Bill McKibben used to be amongst the climate hotfoot campaigners who expressed apprehension over the unusual look.

“Oh, damn,” McKibben wrote on social media.

The researchers expressed spot that the water under the glacier will likely be even hotter in other areas.

Scientists focus on to Thwaites because the “doomsday glacier” as a outcome of the dire implications its fleet melting would possibly perchance likely absorb for the planet. Even though a 10-foot sea level rise would likely buy years, the melting of the glacier would possibly perchance likely at last point out the U.S. would lose 28,800 square miles of coastal land—pushing 12.3 million of us in the in the meantime living in those areas out of their properties.

“Warm waters on this segment of the world, as a ways away as they would possibly perchance likely appear, must always wait on as a warning to all of us about the doable dire changes to the planet triggered by climate commerce,” Holland stated.

The Thwaites glacier has lost 600 billion so much of ice over the last several decades, accelerating to as many as 50 billion so much per one year in unusual years.

“There would possibly perchance be awfully warm water there, and clearly, it will also not were there forever, or the glacier would possibly perchance likely not be there,” Holland told the Washington Post of the unusual findings, suggesting the water has gotten hotter lately.

Scientists are especially concerned about the Thwaites as a outcome of its configuration is an example of “marine ice sheet instability.”

As Chris Mooney wrote on the Post:

Thwaites will get deeper and thicker from its oceanfront position wait on into its interior in the heart of West Antarctica. Here is known to be an unstable configuration for a glacier, as a outcome of because the ocean continues to luxuriate in away at its wrong, the glacier becomes thicker, so extra ice is exposed to the ocean. In flip, that ice flows outward faster.

BBC released a immediate video detailing the scientists’ rush to the Thwaites glacier and their findings.

“The ice rises nearly a mile from the sea mattress and it’s collapsing into the sea at two miles a one year,” the narration explains. “If Thwaites melts, this would possibly perchance enhance sea ranges worldwide by half of a meter. But it and not using a doubt sits in the center of the Antarctic ice sheet and there would possibly perchance be three meters extra of sea level rise locked up in there.”

“That is really, basically inappropriate,” Holland told the Post of the most fresh discovery. “That’s not a sustainable spot for that glacier.”