Part of the world’s widest glacier is about to collapse and could trigger a 3 metre rise in sea levels, threatening coastal cities around the world.
Thwaites is a massive glacier in Antarctica – the size of Florida. A key part of the glacier could break away any day now – an ice shelf that helps protect the main glacier from warm ocean water. Scientists are shocked by the speed at which these changes have happened.
Is there anything we can do to stop it? To discuss the news, Rowan Hooper and Penny Sarchet are joined by New Scientist’s Alison George – former British Antarctic Survey scientist.
Favorite comments:
You don’t get how bad this is going to be
Damn squirrel!
I have a very bold and ambitious idea of geo-engineering project: what about stopping pouring millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere? Yeah I am a genius I know.
There is another wee wrinkly regarding temperature. The melting point of fresh water ice (the glacier) depends on pressure as well. It is about one degreeC per km of water depth. The grounding line at present is at about one kilometer so the melting point of ice is one degree more then at the surface. This gives the sea water that flows down the retrograde bottom slope even more ability to melt ice. The Grounding line will eventually reach about 2km so this will add yet another degree of melting.
oh you’re not just doomed, you’re totally fucked. you’re just too optimistic to realize it. which is one of the biggest parts of the problem. it truly is ‘chicken little time’.
Thwaites Glacier alone is 65cm of sea level rise over 100 to 300 years, and already accounts for 4% of sea level rise. That’s going to accelerate now, and this glacier is not the only one, but it’s more like a freight train than a chicken little moment. Accelerated sea level rise is probably a good thing to put a rocket up some laggards, but would be even better if we hit net zero next year (not going to happen) because we’re already well past our carbon budget. Every ton of CO2 we’re putting in the atmosphere now has to come out again, and that’s going to be heaps harder than simply reaching net zero. We actually need net negative CO2 now, not net zero. Fixing all our methane leaks might actually be a solution we could complete this year, everything is in place to do this already, but there’s so much apathy.
