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Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting. The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began. Now there is...

Ocean water is pushing miles beneath Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier,” making it more vulnerable to melting than previously thought, according to new research which used radar data from space to perform an X-ray of the crucial glacier. As the salty, relatively warm ocean water meets the ice, it’s causing “vigorous melting” underneath the glacier and could mean global sea level rise projections are being underestimated, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise —...

Scientists have looked back in time to reconstruct the past life of Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” — nicknamed because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise. They have discovered it started retreating rapidly in the 1940s, according to a new study that provides an alarming insight into future melting. The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida. Scientists knew it had been losing ice at an accelerating rate since the 1970s, but because satellite data only goes back a few decades, they didn’t know exactly when significant melting began. Now there is...

The study used rock samples to show that ice near Thwaites Glacier was at least 35 meters thinner in the last 5000 years and took a minimum of 3000 years to reach its current size... The team discovered that the rocks they collected were not always covered by ice. Their measurements showed that, during the past 5000 years, ice near Thwaites Glacier was at least 35 meters thinner than it is now. Furthermore, their models demonstrated that its growth since then – making the ice sheet the size it is today – took at least 3000 years. This discovery reveals...

It's massive, it's collapsing due to global warming, and when it goes, sea levels are going to rise by a significant amount, perhaps by 10 feet. "All signs point to (the eventuality that) we're not going to keep this glacier from collapsing," said Villanova University Vice President, Chief Research Officer, and Chemistry Professor Amanda Grannas about the glacier that she said is about the size of Florida. "Part of the weights actually extends out over the ocean. So part of the ice is floating on top of the ocean water, and part of it's located over land." Dr. Grannas said...

Antarctica’s so-called Doomsday Glacier, nicknamed because it is huge and coming apart, is mostly thwarting an international effort to figure out how dangerously vulnerable it is. A large iceberg broke off the deteriorating Thwaites glacier and, along with sea ice, it is blocking two research ships with dozens of scientists from examining how fast its crucial ice shelf is falling apart. Scientists from around the world are part of a multi-year $50 million international effort to study the Florida-sized glacier by land, sea and below for the brief time the remote ice is reachable during the Antarctic summer..... What worries...

The Thwaites glacier is one of the most rapidly changing in Antarctica. It’s been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks, after scientists suggested that this sector of the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet was already on route towards collapse due to warming ocean temperatures. A major collapse of this part of the ice sheet could have dire consequences worldwide, with a global sea level rise of potentially up to 1m. Some models suggest this could take place comparatively rapidly, within a few centuries. But hidden beneath the kilometres of ice in this rapidly changing part of the...

Deciphering Contradictory Antarctic Climate Patterns Antarctica is experiencing some of the fastest warming in the world. Antarctica is cooling. Some of its glaciers are thinning. Some are thickening. Ice shelves are disappearing. More sea ice is forming. Scientists have reported all this in recent months. It may all be true, even the contradictory parts. "Confusing, isn't it?" asked Dr. Eric Rignot, a glacier expert at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dr. Peter T. Doran, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agreed. "It's a mixed bag of signals." The...

Thwaites Glacier — otherwise known as the “Doomsday glacier,” due to the fact it could raise the sea level by several feet — is allegedly hanging on “by its fingernails.” Scientists discovered that the glacier’s underwater base has been eroding due to the increase in the Earth’s temperature, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience. “Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails,” said Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist who co-authored the study. “And we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future — even from one year to the next — once the...

Some people love to be scared. Mary Shelley knew that when she wrote Frankenstein, and genres of fiction and film exist mining that desire for innocent fun and profit. But when politics enters the fray and fears are stoked to scare people into accepting costly and harmful policies, it is important to push back. Two articles from last week illustrate the panic-mongering and the responsible citation of fact. Breitbart highlights a prophet of doom from Rolling Stone magazine, home of the University of Virginia rape hoax story: The massive Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica could "fall apart overnight" and raise sea...

cientists are warning an Antarctic glacier could collapse and cause sea levels to raise at least a foot in the next decade. The scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union the Thwaites glacier, which is the size of Florida, could collapse in the next three to five years. The ice shelf holding the glacier in place is quickly developing cracks due to the warm water hitting it, according to the scientists. "There's going to be a dramatic change in the front of the glacier probably within less than a decade," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative...

One of the ever-looming threats of climate change is sea level rise, which already threatens to displace millions of people worldwide and force them to move inland by the end of the century. A big part of the rising water levels are hotter temperatures at the poles—home to giant glaciers and ice shelves that hold crucial quantities of frozen H2O. The Florida-sized Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, nicknamed the “doomsday glacier,” is already losing 50 billion tons of ice each year. That in itself accounts for around 4 percent of annual global sea level rise. But unpublished research shared at the...

A glacier in West Antarctica, known as "the world's most dangerous," could completely melt away and cause a rapid and "catastrophic" sea-level rise, a new study warns. The study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, notes that the Thwaites Glacier is at a proverbial "tipping point" that could cause a neverending flow of ice into the world's oceans. “If you trigger this instability, you don’t need to continue to force the ice sheet by cranking up temperatures. It will keep going by itself, and that’s the worry,” said the study's lead author and Georgia Tech professor Alex Robel, in a...

Researchers say a massive cavity the size of two-thirds of Manhattan was found under a glacier in Antarctica. The pocket is a sign of "rapid decay" and just one of "several disturbing discoveries" made recently regarding the glacier, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a news release Wednesday. "[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said Pietro Milillo of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster." The growing cavity sits in West Antarctica at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier, which is about as big...

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing due to geothermal heat, not man-made global warming.

Two teams of scientists say the long-feared collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun, kicking off what they say will be a centuries-long, "unstoppable" process that could raise sea levels by as much as 15 feet. "There's been a lot of speculation about the stability of marine ice sheets, and many scientists suspected that this kind of behavior is under way," Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a news release about one of the studies published Monday. "This study provides a more qualitative idea of the rates at which the collapse...

The wailing today is that the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet has already begun. . .

On Monday, May 12, all three network evening newscasts hyped the dire consequences of a new NASA study which show that “large parts of the western Antarctica ice sheet appears to have collapsed.” ABC, CBS, and NBC hyperventilated over the report, and warned of rising sea levels in the immediate future. CBS News’ Elaine Quijano warned “A 10-foot rise in sea level would submerge tunnels and subways here in Manhattan and parts of Queens and Brooklyn. But, Scott, it would also put the entire city of Miami Beach and much of South Florida underwater.” NBC Nightly News and ABC World...