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Tip of Thwaites
Glacier calves off in Antarctica
The tip of the Twaites Glacier has seperated and is now the Twaites Glacier Iceberg. 01 31 2017 As you can see, it is breaking up.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=antarctic&l=MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%28hidden%29%2C
MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%2CCoastlines&t=2017-01-31&z=1&v=-3513036.96875%2C1773578.09375%2C308531.03125%2
C753653.90625
Runaway Glaciers in West Antarctica - 2014
The tip of the Twaites Glacier has seperated and is now the Twaites Glacier Iceberg. 01 31 2017 As you can see, it is breaking up.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=antarctic&l=MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%28hidden%29%2C
MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%2CCoastlines&t=2017-01-31&z=1&v=-3513036.96875%2C1773578.09375%2C308531.03125%2
C753653.90625
Runaway Glaciers in West Antarctica - 2014
Heres's the warning
Scientists Warn the Collapse of This Glacier Could Be Globally Catastrophic
Motherboard,
26 October, 2016
The hulking West Antarctic ice sheet has been worrying scientists for decades. Global warming, as we already know, is causing very massive glaciers to melt a very rapid pace. But if this ice sheet goes, as some climate models have formidably simulated, sea levels could rise by as much as 12 feet. That’s enough to flood 28,800 square miles of coastal land in the United States alone.
For
many experts, the question isn’t if this is going to happen, but
when.
Since
the 1950s, West Antarctica’s glaciers have
been called “unstable,”
“unstoppable,” and the region’s “weak underbelly” by
researchers who recognized their unique vulnerabilities and immense
potential for catastrophe.
In
particular, the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers near the Amundsen
Sea are of utmost concern because they possess the ability to
destabilize the entire ice sheet, setting off a careening chain of
events. According to Washington
Post,
while both glaciers are capable of causing up to two feet of sea
level rise, each depositing nearly “45 billion tons of ice into the
ocean annually,” their structural integrity makes them especially
dangerous.
Image: NASA/GSFC/SVS
Unlike
other glaciers, which are “pinned”
down by islands or other landmasses, Thwaites and Pine Island are
more or less latched onto an underlying seabed, exposing them to
warming ocean currents. Thwaites glacier, explained Science,
“has a wide front on the ocean's edge and sits on ground below sea
level, where warming waters can slowly melt its base. This deep
seawater is held back by a submerged ridge, but once water surmounts
this grounding line, the land slopes downward into a basin of
uncertain topography and slipperiness.”
Two
papers, published in 2014 to Geophysical
Research Letters and Science,
used climate models to map out the thinning of these glaciers over
the last two decades, laying out what scientists had been predicting
for years.
A
newer study, published last year to the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
went even further, modeling the exponential collapse of the entire
ice sheet, starting with currently melting along the Amundsen Sea.
What the study confirmed,according
to Ian Joughin,
co-author of the previous year’s Science paper,
was that “knocking out the Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites takes
down the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”
While
the papers came to similar conclusions regarding the hypothetical
outcome of such a glacier collapse, they disagreed on exact
timelines. Whether we should be looking at centuries or millennia
remains unclear.
Thankfully,
an upcoming collaboration between the National Science Foundation and
the Natural Environment Research Council hopes to answer that
question. “Satellite measurements indicate that the rate of ice
loss near the Thwaites Glacier has doubled in six years, and now
accounts for about 10 percent of global sea level rise,” the
agencies said in a
joint statement announcing
their partnership.
Together,
both will dedicate up to $25 million to understand the consequences
and urgency of these events, with specific emphasis on Thwaites
glacier.
“Recent
studies indicate that the greatest risk for future rapid sea-level
rise now comes from the Thwaites Glacier due to the large changes
already underway, the potential contribution to sea-level rise, and
the fact that a collapse could occur within decades or centuries—a
remarkably rapid change in relatively short geological time.”
Fieldwork
at Thwaites glacier will begin in 2019 and extend through 2020, the
agencies added. Projects will involve researchers from both the
United States and the United Kingdom, and will include modeling to
predict ice loss in the West Antarctic ice sheet.
