US EditionScientists Depart for Month-Long Antarctic Glacier Study
Researchers identify underwater eddies as a key driver of rapid ice melt beneath Thwaites Glacier, which contributes over a third of Antarctic ice loss, accelerating sea-level rise.
- A new ITGC study presents a detailed record of gradual shear-zone collapse on Thwaites Glacier, assembling satellite, ice-flow, and GPS observations from the Centre for Earth Observation and Science, University of Manitoba.
- Growing fractures increased ice-shelf shear-zone cracks from about 165 km to 336 km, weakening the mid-ocean ridge anchorage and accelerating upstream ice flow.
- Researchers documented weakening in four crack phases with two-stage growth, many short cross‑flow cracks under 2 km, an average crack length drop from 3.2 km to 1.5 km, and a propagation rate of 55 km per year.
- The collapse turned the shear-zone anchorage unstable, producing large structural cracks that fueled a feedback loop where cracks accelerate ice flow, spawning more cracks.
- Thwaites' scale raises stakes as Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier account for over a third of Antarctic ice loss, and the `doomsday glacier` threatens coastal cities if untethered.
14 Articles
14 Articles
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University of Minnesota part of search in Antarctica for Earth's oldest ice
Over the holidays, a team of researchers and a University of Minnesota employee are hard at work in Antarctica. The scientists are drilling for ice millions of years old, deep beneath the surface.
The Thwaites glacier (in Western Antarctica) and its neighbor Pine Island are again concentrating scientific attention for an uncomfortable reason for climatic models and for coastal planning. A work published in Nature Geoscience identifies small-scale underwater whirls (submesoscales) that act as a blender under the floating platforms of both glaciers and increase fusion from below into very short windows (from hours to days), an unusual rhyth…
New research from Dartmouth shows how underwater 'storms' may shape glacier melt
Dartmouth oceanographer Yoshihiro Nakayama created a high-resolution model to study the melting of two glaciers in western Antarctica, and found that small-scale underwater eddies melt ice from below.
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