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Massive “Doomsday Glacier” May Be More Stable Than Initially Feared

Accepted submission by Anti-aristarchus at 2021-06-19 19:48:23 from the What they always say dept.
Science

Maybe. Maybe not. New study, reported on at SciTechDaily [scitechdaily.com],

Study sheds light on the future of the massive Thwaites Glacier.

The world’s largest ice sheets may be in less danger of sudden collapse than previously predicted, according to new findings led by the University of Michigan.

The study, published in Science, included simulating the demise of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, one of the world’s largest and most unstable glaciers. Researchers modeled the collapse of various heights of ice cliffs—near-vertical formations that occur where glaciers and ice shelves meet the ocean. They found that instability doesn’t always lead to rapid disintegration.

“What we found is that over long timescales, ice behaves like a viscous fluid, sort of like a pancake spreading out in a frying pan,” said Jeremy Bassis, U-M associate professor of climate and space sciences and engineering. “So the ice spreads out and thins faster than it can fail and this can stabilize collapse. But if the ice can’t thin fast enough, that’s when you have the possibility of rapid glacier collapse.”

Or, not.

“There’s no doubt that sea levels are rising, and that it’s going to continue in the coming decades,” Bassis said. “But I think this study offers hope that we’re not approaching a complete collapse—that there are measures that can mitigate and stabilize things. And we still have the opportunity to change things by making decisions about things like energy emissions—methane and CO2.”

“The ocean is always there, sort of tickling the ice in a very complex way, and we’ve only known for a decade or two just how important it is,” he said. “But we’re beginning to understand that it’s driving a lot of the changes we’re seeing, and I think that’s going to be the next big frontier in our research.”

Reference: “Transition to marine ice cliff instability controlled by ice thickness gradients and velocity” by J. N. Bassis, B. Berg, A. J. Crawford and D. I. Benn, 18 June 2021, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abf6271


Original Submission