The new ‘Nigerian princes’ of hacking? In the 1990s it was losing just over 10 billion tonnes of ice a year. Velocity map of the Thwaites Glacier catchment, West Antarctica - Volume 50 Issue 168 - Oliver Lang, Bernhard T. Rabus, Stefan W. Dech Thwaites Glacier is nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier because of the deadly impact its melting could have on our planet. The new information refines the volumes for ingressing warm water that can be considered possible under different scenarios. Over the past 30 years, this glacier has undergone dramatic changes. Data from two research missions, using aircraft and ship, are helping scientists to understand the contribution this huge and remote glacier is likely to make to future global sea level rise. A view of Thwaites Glacier from a BAS Twin Otter aircraft in January 2020. Credit: Carl Robinson. “The more this marine ice sheet instability occurs, the wider the range of possible future sea level rise becomes,” Robel says. Think of six football pitches back to back," said Dr Kelly Hogan from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). New maps show how warm water may reach Thwaites Glacier’s icy underbelly. “This is going to challenge our logistics and science effort in … Thwaites Glacier is roughly the size of UK (176 x10 3 km 2). Robel, along with scientists Helene Seroussi and Gerard Roe used mathematical analysis and computer models to make projections of sea levels in the future. British and American scientists have had to temporarily suspend their investigations at Thwaites because of the Covid-19 crisis. If you took off in an airplane from El Paso, Texas and flew due south — across about 590 miles (950 kilometers) of western Mexico and 5,700 miles (9,200 km) of Pacific Ocean — you’d see it out your window as a white expanse with sheer cliffs where it meets open water. Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica, is of particular concern to scientists. ... Map of seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier could help scientists predict future sea level rise. Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier may be thinning faster than previously thought The disturbing conclusion comes from a new look at vintage film from an aerial survey of … Waits patiently, quietly, and long-term, perhaps even indefinitely. Few places in Antarctica are more difficult to reach than Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized hunk of frozen water that meets the Amundsen Sea about 800 miles west of McMurdo. Huge cavities threaten glacier larger than Great Britain. Their scientists sailed a ship equipped with an echo-sounder right up to the glacier's ice cliffs, to trace the shape of the seabed below. It once held 14 billion tons of ice. NASA has released a digital image map of the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands. Thwaites Glacier today is rapidly losing mass in response to changing atmospheric and oceanic conditions. © 2020 BBC. The Guardian. These deviations reflected the seafloor's undulations beneath the shelf. "The connected channels that we've mapped in detail for the first time are the potential pathways for deep-ocean warm water to get in and do damage at that point where the glacier is still grounded on the seabed, where it begins to lift up and float," explained BAS colleague Dr Tom Jordan, "but also to melt the base of the ice shelf, which if you weaken will make the ice further upstream in the glacier flow faster.". A radar image of Thwaites … One of Graham’s jobs is to oversee the devices that scientists are using on this trip to map the sea floor in front of Thwaites glacier. Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica, is of particular concern to scientists. Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica NASA/OIB/Jeremy Harbeck First … Thwaites Glacier is located on the Western border of the Antarctic continent. Scientists have found the giant Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting from the inside and believe they now know why. The glacier is one of the most worrying in Antarctica Credit: AFP. It's a majestic sight, with its buoyant front, or "ice shelf", pushing far out to sea and kicking off huge icebergs. Thwaites Glacier is one of the largest glaciers in West Antarctica covering a region of the size of Great Britain (see Fig. 'No corners cut' in vaccine approval, regulator says, US scuba boat captain charged over 34 fire deaths, 'One boy stood out to me - he's now my son', 'I wake up wondering if I still have a job', Why it feels like a government without a majority, 'We've lost a day of trade' over lockdown end date. Antarctica's Thwaites glacier has warm water from three directions well under it threatening to destroy the ice sheet and raise global sea levels by up to two feet. Thwaites Glacier accounts for one-third of the mass loss from the ASE.” Scientists discovered the hole thanks to Italian and German satellites, as well as NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a program that since 2010 has used ice-penetrating radar aboard aircraft flying over Antarctica to study connections between polar regions and global climate. They wanted to understand how possible scenarios of future sea level rise might change over time as a result of marine ice sheet instability. "These channels had not been mapped before in this kind of detail, and what we've discovered is that they're actually much bigger than anyone thought - up to 600m deep. Its surface elevation has thinned by about 1.5-2 m between 2011 and 2014. Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier 'Has Got Three Guns Pointed Right At It' Scientists have discovered three channels of warm water under Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier … Thwaites Glacier is a vast brick of ice flowing into Pine Island Bay in western Antarctica. Under the huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is an unexpected, enormous cavern. In Antarctica  Map of Thwaites Glacier Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S106°45′W) is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is extremely remote. Thwaites Glacier Mass Balance Velocity map of the Thwaites Glacier catchment, West Antarctica - Volume 50 Issue 168 - Oliver Lang, Bernhard T. Rabus, Stefan W. Dech In other news, the first full map of the hidden continent below Antarctica has been revealed. This is the first in a series of deep dives into the science and people of the Nathaniel B. Palmer’s 2019 voyage to Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. EurekAlert. more_vert. Thwaites, which flows into Antarctica… Thwaites is the widest glacier on Earth, at ~120 km (~80 miles) wide. Let’s hope Thwaites in Antarctica waits. Currently, Thwaites' ice loss contributes approximately 4% to the annual rise in global sea-levels, with the potential to add 65cm in total should the whole glacier collapse. It is also one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in Antarctica. Under the huge Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is an unexpected, enormous cavern. more_vert. One of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers may be in more precarious shape than scientists thought. In the next few days, scientists will lower the torpedo-shaped robot, dubbed Icefin, into a nearly 2,000-foot-long (600 meters) borehole in the ice of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) image map is a composite of 260 swaths comprised of both Terra and Aqua MODIS images acquired between November 20, 2003 and February 29, 2004. Channels of warm ocean water melting the ice from below threaten the stability of Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica. VideoThe new ‘Nigerian princes’ of hacking? Thwaites Glacier, sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is an unusually broad and vast Antarctic glacier flowing into the Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. Science News. But satellite monitoring indicates this glacier is melting at an accelerating rate. Scientists need real-world data to corral their models so that when they run simulations of possible future behaviour, they get realistic outcomes. The UK and the US joined forces in 2019 to investigate Thwaites. It once held 14 billion tons of ice. Thwaites Glacier is extremely remote; the study sites on the glacier are about 1,000 miles away from both the UK’s British Antarctic Survey Rothera Research Station and the U.S. Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station. "And because they are so deep, and so wide - this allows a lot more water to get at, and melt, Thwaites' floating front as well as its ice that rests on the seabed," she told BBC News. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos, .css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link{color:inherit;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{color:#696969;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:focus,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:focus{color:#B80000;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link::after,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited::after{content:'';position:absolute;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;left:0;z-index:2;}Pfizer vaccine judged safe for use in UK next week. Thanks to this nearly Manhattan-size gap in the ice, the entire glacier along with the surrounding ice sheet will likely disappear much more quickly. Video. A look at maps of the region's ice loss makes this clear, says Nick Holschuh, a geologist at Amherst College. The glacier terminus is nearly 120 km wide, and the bed of the glacier reaches to >1000 m below sea level. A map of Antarctica showing Thwaites Glacier. We believe this was the biggest eruption in Antarctica during the last 10,000 years. But the current melting trend would suggest this situation won't last much longer, says BAS's Dr Robert Larter. Its ice flow has accelerated by about 50-100 m per year since 2009. "Even before ice shelf break-up, the unpinning and thinning will reduce the buttressing effect of the ice shelf on the glacier upstream of it, resulting in increased ice flow velocity. WIRED's January cover story is taking readers to Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier. Antarctica's Thwaites glacier has warm water from three directions well under it threatening to destroy the ice sheet and raise global sea levels by up to two feet. "When the Eastern Ice Shelf becomes unpinned, the ice will spread out and thin, eventually breaking up, as we can see is happening right now on the (central) glacier tongue," he told BBC News. “If you were to zoom out and look at the whole picture, there's just this bright red spot to the edge of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where Thwaites and [neighboring glacier] Pine Island are thinning like crazy.” This in turn will further accelerate thinning of the glacier and grounding line retreat.". Listen Mondays on The World and check back online through May and June to learn what scientists found as they studied the sea that’s melting this Florida-sized piece of ice. This is the first in a series of deep dives into the science and people of the Nathaniel B. Palmer’s 2019 voyage to Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. Thwaites Glacier is one of the largest glaciers in West Antarctica covering a region of the size of Great Britain (see Fig. No-one thinks this will happen in the short-to-medium term, but Thwaites is considered particularly vulnerable in a warming world, and scientists would like to know precisely how fast any changes might occur. Read about our approach to external linking. New seafloor maps reveal the first clear view of a system of channels that may be helping to hasten the demise of West Antarctica’s vulnerable Thwaites Glacier. It covers an area of 192,000 sqkm — in comparison, Tasmania is 68,401 sqkm and Victoria is 227,444 sqkm. share. A massive one that poses such risk it's been branded the 'Doomsday Glacier". Thwaites is one of the fastest-melting spots on the continent, believed to … .css-14iz86j-BoldText{font-weight:bold;}Scientists may just have identified Thwaites Glacier's Achilles heel. Thwaites Glacier (one of the main pathways for ice drainage in the region) has recently widened and may continue to do so in the near future. Here, warm water is pushed up onto the continental shelf, where it flows along the bottom until it reaches the floating ice shelf in front of Thwaites Glacier. Today, it's more like 80 billion tonnes. It was named by ACAN for Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. And here’s a moral of this Thwaites video, adapted freely from Las Vegas tourism interests: What happens in Antarctica, and in particular in this instance at Thwaites, doesn’t stay in Antarctica. Antarctica is split into two main ice sheets: west and east. Thwaites Glacier Map - Antarctica - Mapcarta Scientists may just have identified Thwaites Glacier's Achilles heel. Photo credit_NSF The Thwaites Glacier is...a glacier. Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier may be thinning faster than previously thought The disturbing conclusion comes from a new look at vintage film from an aerial survey of … Thwaites Glacier today is rapidly losing mass in response to changing atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Data from two research missions, using aircraft and ship, are helping scientists to understand the contribution this huge and remote glacier is likely to make to future global sea level rise. The work will focus on the regions of flow transition and will map the internal stratigraphy of the ice sheet across the Thwaites Glacier shear margins and use the age and geometry of radar-detected internal layers to interpret ice flow history. It's information that will be used to try to predict the ice stream's future. This tells them about the sorts of speeds ice further back in the glacier can achieve as it slides across rock and sediment. Its surface speeds exceed 2 kilometres per year (1.2 miles per year) near its grounding line. Its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 km (31 and 62 mi) east of Mount Murphy on the north coast of West Antarctica. The UTIG team, which includes research scientist associate Dillon Buhl, postdoc Anja Rutishauser and grad student Natalie Wolfenbarger, will study the underside of the glacier using a suite of airborne geophysical instruments and sensors. Teams were due to head back to the glacier this austral summer, but the location's remoteness means the risks are too great should anyone fall ill. Once the coronavirus outbreak has been properly contained, the scientists will return, however. Collaborative Research: Ice-flow history of the Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica This award supports a project to study the Amundsen Sea drainage system and improve understanding of the impact of recent glaciological changes as an aid to predicting how this region will change in the future. Three times normal regional bedrock heat flow in the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier area (Schroeder 2014, Steig 2009). 1). Not by a long shot. Currently, Thwaites' ice loss contributes approximately 4% to the annual rise in global sea-levels, with the potential to add 65cm in total should the whole glacier collapse. The NHS is ready to use the initial 800,000 doses when they arrive, the health secretary says. The cause of the melting is thought to be the influx of relatively warm bottom-water drawn in from the wider ocean. amp video_youtube Sep 9. bookmark_border. They trace the path of a network of deep channels that cut through a ridge before joining up to form a major cavity under the ice shelf. It blew a substantial hole in the ice sheet, and generated a plume of ash and gas that rose around 12 km into the air.” . Over the past 30 years, this glacier has undergone dramatic changes. In any map of the Antarctic ice sheet, Thwaites Glacier is bound to be a prime concern. Moreover, this lower section of the glacier is accelerating (light grey contours on the right side map, speed change in meters per year between 2008 and 2016). "It's amazing to go to a place like Thwaites to see the changes taking place right before your eyes," said Dr Hogan. The latest research is published in two papers in the journal The Cryosphere, and can be accessed here and here. Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. A newly updated Antarctic Digital Database is released this week. Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S 106°45′W / 75.500°S 106.750°W ), sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is an unusually broad and vast Antarctic glacier flowing into the Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. Latitude: -75° 29' 59.99" SLongitude: -106° 44' 59.99" W, Satellite map of Thwaites Glacier in Google Maps. Teams of researchers from the UK and the US studied Antarctica's Thwaites glacier and its adjoining ice shelves in early 2019 - one from the air, the other from ... amp video_youtube Sep 8. bookmark_border. And here’s a moral of this Thwaites video, adapted freely from Las Vegas tourism interests: What happens in Antarctica, and in particular in this instance at Thwaites, doesn’t stay in Antarctica. MOA provides a cloud-free view of the ice sheet, ice … Here, warm water is pushed up onto the continental shelf, where it flows along the bottom until it reaches the floating ice shelf in front of Thwaites Glacier. Its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 kilometres (31 and 62 mi) east of Mount Murphy. At the moment, the eastern side of the ice shelf is hooked on to a large ridge, which gives it stability. It was named by the Ad… This Antarctic colossus is melting at a rapid rate, dumping billions of tonnes of ice in the ocean every year and pushing up global sea-levels. 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"When we were there in 2019, we were able to get right up to the ice shelf cliffs, and the reason we could do that and make our observations was because the icebergs and sea-ice that have always been there historically are starting to disappear.". Pfizer vaccine judged safe for use in UK next week, The new ‘Nigerian princes’ of hacking? By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent. Runaway Glacier. Flowing off the west of the Antarctic continent, Thwaites is almost as big as Great Britain. A large area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet flows to the ocean via Thwaites Glacier, which extends over 192,000 sq kms (74,000 sq miles), an area the size of Florida or the island of Britain. Its surface speeds exceed 2 km/yr near its grounding line, and its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 km east of Mount Murphy. Thwaites Glacier is a fragile piece of one of the most rapidly changing places on Earth. 1). Antarctica is being melted from below by warm underground rivers, panicked scientists have warned. Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S106°45′W) is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. If the enormous Thwaites Glacier loses enough ice, … Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier 'Has Got Three Guns Pointed Right At It' Scientists have discovered three channels of warm water under Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier … The eastern sheet is actually reasonably safe in the short-term. NASA has released a digital image map of the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) image map is a composite of 260 swaths comprised of both Terra and Aqua MODIS images acquired between November 20, 2003 and February 29, 2004. EARTH'S most dangerous chunk of ice is probably the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica – so at risk it's called the "Doomsday Glacier". We believe this was the biggest eruption in Antarctica during the last 10,000 years. Now, a UK-US team has surveyed the deep seafloor channels in front of the glacier that almost certainly provide the access for warm water to infiltrate and attack Thwaites' underside. share. The updated Antarctica Digital Database Map Viewer (www.add.scar.org) The Antarctic Digital Database (ADD) is a compilation of the best available … What the researchers have produced, if you like, is a kind of "stickiness index" to additionally constrain the computer models. “Not only that… Scientists mapped channels that carry warm water to the underside of Thwaites glacier Credit: British Antarctic Survey. Water seeping into fissures in Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, accelerating rise of sea levels. The two datasets taken together now provide the best view yet of Thwaites' underlying topography. knows about the arcticfigure 1: map of antarctica figure 2: greenland ice sheet figure 3: thwaites glacier figure 4. larsen b ice shelf collapse of 2002 figure 5: the ross ice shelf 2018 figure 6: the larsen & wilkins ice shelves figure 7: sea level in glaciation and… The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. Thwaites Glacier holds enough ice to drive up sea levels more than 2 feet. Listen Mondays on The World and check back online through May and June to learn what scientists found as they studied the sea that’s melting this Florida-sized piece of ice. Teams of researchers from the UK and the US studied Antarctica's Thwaites glacier and its adjoining ice shelves in early 2019 - one from the air, the other from ... amp video_youtube Sep 8. bookmark_border. Scientists say the glacier is responsible for about four percent of global sea level rise. Already, ice draining from Thwaites into the Amundsen Sea accounts for about four percent of global sea level rise. (Source: Elevation Map of Antarctica (REMA), Howat et al., 2019, The Cryosphere) 2. Scientists may just have identified Thwaites Glacier's Achilles heel. Thwaites Glacier is a vast brick of ice flowing into Pine Island Bay in western Antarctica. A collapse of the glacier would lead to a significant increase in sea levels of around 65cm (25 inches) over the coming centuries. A plane was also flown back and forth across the shelf to measure small variations in the pull of gravity. Let’s hope Thwaites in Antarctica waits. Thwaites is both very large and flows very rapidly (color map, right side), with wide areas of the lower glacier moving at over 1 km per year. Its ice flow has accelerated by about 50-100 m per year since 2009. In conducting their survey, scientists also now have a better idea of the general roughness of the seafloor. Waits patiently, quietly, and long-term, perhaps even indefinitely. Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. Three times normal regional bedrock heat flow in the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier area (Schroeder 2014, Steig 2009). Thwaites Glacier), sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is an unusually broad and vast Antarctic glacier flowing into the Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land Its surface speeds exceed 2 kilometres per year (1.2 miles per year) near its grounding line. Aimed at the science and logistics communities, the maps include updates to the ice shelf front around Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, a new coastline for the South Shetland Islands and updated contours on the South Orkney Islands. A newly updated Antarctic Digital Database is released this week. The Thwaites has moved … .css-8h1dth-Link{font-family:ReithSans,Helvetica,Arial,freesans,sans-serif;font-weight:700;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#FFFFFF;}.css-8h1dth-Link:hover,.css-8h1dth-Link:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Read about our approach to external linking. 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It blew a substantial hole in the ice sheet, and generated a plume of ash and gas that rose around 12 km into the air.” . That pace of change is what caught people’s … The new ‘Nigerian princes’ of hacking? Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier together account for 3% of grounded ice-sheet area, but they receive 7% of Antarctica’s snowfall 1. Waits patiently, quietly, and long-term, perhaps even indefinitely. Glaciers are huge sheets of ice moving very slowly, and contain vast amounts of … Thwaites Glacier.