Ocean water is seeping beneath ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ causing ‘vigorous melting,’ report says

(Gray News) - Ocean water is pushing under the grounded ice of the Thwaites Glacier — also known as the “Doomsday Glacier” — in Antarctica, making the glacier more vulnerable to melting than anticipated.

The researchers published their findings Monday in the journal PNAS, or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

Using new data gathered from March to June of 2023 by Finland’s ICEYE commercial satellite mission, the researchers determined that ocean water is intruding many kilometers between the glacier and the ground. This contact causes “vigorous melting” of the glacier.

“In the past, we had some sporadically available data, and with just those few observations it was hard to figure out what was happening. When we have a continuous time series and compare that with the tidal cycle, we see the seawater coming in at high tide and receding and sometimes going farther up underneath the glacier and getting trapped. Thanks to ICEYE, we’re beginning to witness this tidal dynamic for the first time,” said lead author Eric Rignot, UC Irvine professor of Earth system science, in a news release.

The researchers said they are concerned that scientists have underestimated the likelihood of the glacier’s collapse.

The Thwaites Glacier is larger than the state of Florida, so the potential collapse of the glacier could contribute to sea rise and have devastating consequences for coastal areas.

If the glacier collapses entirely, global sea levels would increase by 25 inches, a study said. Scientists say a collapse of the glacier, if it occurs at all, won’t happen for centuries. But the melting ice in the meantime is already contributing to sea level rise.

“Thwaites is the most unstable place in the Antarctic and contains the equivalent of 60 centimeters of sea level rise,” said co-author Christine Dow, professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “The worry is that we are underestimating the speed that the glacier is changing, which would be devastating for coastal communities around the world.”

The ice sheet in Antarctica has been losing mass for decades, in part due to rising ocean temperatures.

Coastal locations of the U.S. face future effects of sea level rise. NOAA’s Sea Level Rise map viewer gives people a way to visualize how future scenarios could impact their communities.

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