Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 12 submissions in the queue.
posted by hubie on Monday September 30, @03:18AM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A six-year investigation into the vast Thwaites glacier in Antarctica has concluded with a grim outlook on its future.

Often dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, this huge mass of ice is comparable in size to Britain or Florida and its collapse alone would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres. Worse still, this is expected to trigger a more widespread loss of the ice sheet covering West Antarctica, causing a calamitous sea level rise of 3.3 metres and threatening cities like New York, Kolkata and Shanghai.

It is an extremely remote and difficult area to get to, but the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), a joint UK-US research programme, has managed to deploy 100 scientists there over the past six years, using planes, ships and underwater robots to study the dynamics of this ice in detail.  “It was a tremendous challenge, and yet we really learned a lot,” says Ted Scambos at University of Colorado Boulder.

These discoveries include the fact that Thwaites glacier is particularly vulnerable, as it rests on a bed of rock that is well below sea level and is being melted from the underside by warmer seawater. What’s more, the bedrock slopes downwards towards the interior of the ice sheet, so, as the glacier retreats, even more ice is exposed to warm seawater, threatening to accelerate the collapse.

[...] “It’s not going to instantaneously lead to a catastrophic retreat in the next year or the year after, but, at the same time, we are very sure that Thwaites is going to continue to retreat, and ultimately the retreat is going to accelerate,” says Rob Larter at the British Antarctic Survey, another member of the team. “We can’t put an exact time frame on that.”

Ultimately, however, the ITCG researchers think that, by the end of the 23rd century, Thwaites glacier and much of the West Antarctic ice sheet might be lost.


Original Submission

 
This discussion was created by hubie (1068) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Monday September 30, @07:31PM (2 children)

    by Tokolosh (585) on Monday September 30, @07:31PM (#1375152)

    Keep fiddling with GHG emissions, in any realistic, or even optimistic scenario, it is not going to stop global warming.

    Time to focus on cheap and really effective methods of cooling the climate. Please, ditch the single-minded obsession with emissions.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday October 01, @10:02AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01, @10:02AM (#1375233) Journal
    Or even the elephant in the room: adaptation.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Ox0000 on Tuesday October 01, @02:13PM

    by Ox0000 (5111) on Tuesday October 01, @02:13PM (#1375278)

    Time to focus on cheap and really effective methods of cooling the climate.

    Yeah, like why aren't we just asking everyone to leave their fridge and freezer doors open, run the AC with the doors open. It's innovative thinking like that that we need if we will solve this!

    It's a joke