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Antarctica’s 'Doomsday' Glacier Is Heading For Catastrophic Collapse

posted by hubie on Monday September 30 2024, @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.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Monday September 30 2024, @10:26PM (10 children)

    by Mykl (1112) on Monday September 30 2024, @10:26PM (#1375179)

    While this is obviously a warning that we will have mass migration from seaboard communities across the globe within the next 200 years (few will wait for the water to lap at their doors), it's also a warning to prepare for that mass migration much earlier. See Jakarta, Indonesia as an example of what to look forward to - 40% of the city is now below sea level, with parts of the city sinking almost 1 foot every year. Overcrowding and lack of natural access to fresh water has led the city to overuse the aquifier under the ground, to the point that it is now almost depleted. This has the doubling effect of waste water seeping _into_ the aquifier space, meaning that the water that most residents depend on is now contaminated.

    So, where will all of these billions of coastal dwellers move to once the coast is underwater? Why, former farming land, of course! I wonder what that will do for food security? How much planning might be needed to avoid that little crisis?

    These are problems for now, not next century.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 01 2024, @10:01AM (9 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2024, @10:01AM (#1375232) Journal

    While this is obviously a warning that we will have mass migration from seaboard communities across the globe within the next 200 years (few will wait for the water to lap at their doors), it's also a warning to prepare for that mass migration much earlier.

    Why would there be an earlier mass migration? There's an evidence problem here. And most such "mass migrations" will just be at most a few kilometers or so to mildly higher ground.

    • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday October 01 2024, @11:18AM (8 children)

      by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday October 01 2024, @11:18AM (#1375246)

      What makes you think that the sea level will stop rising after 1 meter? 2 meters? Only fools would flee rising waters just to place themselves into the same problem a few decades later. Until sea levels stabilize (assuming that they do rise, and the evidence suggests they are and will), most people will build in a bit of contingency to their move.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 01 2024, @12:26PM (7 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 01 2024, @12:26PM (#1375253) Journal

        What makes you think that the sea level will stop rising after 1 meter? 2 meters?

        When? Even hundreds of meters of sea level rise is irrelevant to our future over a long enough time frame. Consider this: the average person moves several times during their life. In the US, it's close to a dozen [movebuddha.com] times. Your 1-2 meters would be over several human lifespans. So just make a few of those moves uphill. It's not a serious thing. Most such moving would be utterly transparent to society.

        And that gets me to a key point of this "mass migration". It would be over such long time frames and short distances, that we wouldn't even notice. It would be part of the normal ebb and flow of humans - which already compensates for a lot of problems (crime rate, economics, etc) without a lot of drama.

        • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday October 01 2024, @11:02PM (6 children)

          by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday October 01 2024, @11:02PM (#1375412)

          As I said earlier, I think we'll find it a lot more like what's happening with Jakarta right now, only replicated across dozens of countries and billions of people.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 02 2024, @03:48AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 02 2024, @03:48AM (#1375443) Journal

            As I said earlier, I think we'll find it a lot more like what's happening with Jakarta right now, only replicated across dozens of countries and billions of people.

            And as I said earlier, we're already doing what it takes to adapt in real time to that problem - among many others.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 02 2024, @12:03PM (4 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 02 2024, @12:03PM (#1375469) Journal

            I think we'll find it a lot more like what's happening with Jakarta right now,

            I doubt there's anything happening with Jakarta right now that is related to climate change. And when there is, natural movement of people will more than compensate.

            And when I look for news stories about what is allegedly happening with Jakarta right now, the closest I can see is a nutty plan [reuters.com] to shut down coal power plants in developing world markets without adequate replacement power in place. They've failed already to get South Africa to do it and now Indonesia is balking as well. Turns out once again, that First World problems don't get taken seriously in the developing world unless you're willing to back that with a lot of money. Even then, sometimes the money isn't enough.

            CIREBON, Indonesia, Sept 25 (Reuters) - A G7-backed push to close coal power plants in emerging markets is facing further delays after a July deadline passed without a deal on the early closure of an Indonesian power plant that would be the first to shut under the initiative.

            The push against coal comes under the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) with Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam that call for billions of dollars in investments, grants and loans from G7 members, multilateral banks and private lenders to help them transition to low-carbon economies.

            Cutting emissions from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is seen as a crucial element of the JETPs if the world is to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

            But a deal on the early shutdown of coal power plants in South Africa remains elusive amid its struggles with rolling blackouts, and hope for proof of concept has turned to Indonesia's 660 megawatt Cirebon-1 plant in West Java province, 220 km (140 miles) east of capital Jakarta.

            The legal and financial implications of closing Cirebon-1 are a stumbling block though. Jakarta is worried, too, that costs for replacing it with renewable energy could reach $1.3 billion, mostly in subsidies to cover more expensive renewable power generation, according to the finance ministry.