Visiting the most vulnerable place on Earth: the ‘doomsday glacier’ – PBS Newshour (2020)

For a little over more than 33 million years, the Antarctic continent remained an exceptionally isolated land mass due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that forms a thermal shield around it. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the strongest ocean current on our planet flowing without obstruction from any other land masses.

Unfortunately human induced global warming is changing all that and the effects of the climate change is being felt at both poles of the planet through a phenomenon known as polar amplification.

Scientists are worried. Thwaits Glacier is at the heart of Antarctica and is on the verge of collapse. The glacier has a massive ice shelf. It hangs over the ocean and the underlying water temperature is too warm to support it.

Our planet is at a special period in its geological history that water can exist in its three state. The solid ice state of the planet is known as the cryosphere and we are losing it fast. Scientists studying the cryosphere are using every resource in their hands to understand disappearance of ice. Glaciologists study ice fields from land. Others study sea ice from ships such as the MOSAiC expedition. They couple those measurements by instruments on planes and satellites.

If we look into the geological history of out planet cooling periods were quite prolonged compared to rapid warming episodes. There appears to be a number of climatic feedbacks that accellarate warming. The most notable warming period experienced in the past is a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) at about 56 million years ago. The Thwaites Glacier which is considered one of those “threshold systems”. These systems remain stable until pushed too far, collapsing rapidly like ice left at the bottom of the beverage collapsing on your face as you try to sip the last drops. Collapse of Thwaites glacier will destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice leading to sea level rise more than 4m. In fact, it has retreated more than 14 kilometers in the last two decades.

You can learn more about the Thwaites Glacier by exploring it in a dedicated interactive website