Six Feet Of Sea Level Rise From Thwaites Glacier Still Possible By 2100; Thwaites Ice Shelf On Brink Of Collapse [View all]

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​​After six years of probing, poking and sampling a Florida-sized chunk of ice in West Antarctica with submarines, satellites and drills, scientists with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration said Thursday that a worst-case meltdown scenario still can’t be ruled out, since emissions of climate-heating greenhouse gases continue to set new records each year. Combined with meltwater from ice in other parts of Antarctica and Greenland as well as from mountain glaciers around the world, and the thermal expansion of warming oceans, a Thwaites Glacier meltdown could spur sea level to rise six feet higher than today by 2100, the researchers said.

Many coastal communities would not be able to adapt to that much sea level rise in that time span, and it’s likely that millions of people would be displaced, as extreme coastal flooding devastated low-lying cities, residential neighborhoods, croplands and natural ecosystems. That increase in water levels would swallow some small islands entirely in the span of just a few decades.

The Thwaites Glacier is more than 6,000 feet thick in places, holding enough ice to raise sea level by 2 feet if it melts completely. It is also a keystone holding back the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, much of which sits on a bed below sea level, that would raise oceans by about 11 feet if it all reached the sea. The glacier has been retreating for 80 years, a process that accelerated significantly in the last three decades and will speed up even more in the years ahead, the researchers said during the release of a science briefing of key results from studies done by hundreds of researchers working on different parts of the glacier and in the adjacent ocean.

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Some of the data was collected by remote-controlled submarines, and shows how tides can drive pulses of water beneath the glacier to cause more melting. Other scientists studied surface melting, and how pooling water and more rainfall can weaken the ice from above. In some scenarios, towering ice cliffs could collapse like rows of dominoes, disintegrating city-size areas of ice in sudden bursts. The scientists also noted that the Thwaites Glacier’s floating extension—its ice shelf—is on the verge of breaking up completely. That wouldn’t directly accelerate sea level rise significantly, they said, because that ice is already in the ocean, but it’s uncertain how the glacial front at the edge of the sea will react when the floating ice shelf is gone.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19092024/grim-outlook-for-thwaites-glacier/