Why was it nicknamed 'The Doomsday of Antarctica'? Because its collapse could cause a catastrophic rise in sea level. It's the Thwaites Glacier, and it's receding into the water. The Doomsday Glacier is slowly melting.
What would happen if it collapsed due to melting? Global sea level would rise by up to three meters. Science reconstructed the past life of the glacier. They analyzed the cores of marine sediments extracted from the ocean subsoil. They looked at the history of the Thwaites from the present to more than 10,000 years ago.
Absolute catastrophe
The Thwaites and its neighbor, the Pine Island, lost contact with the seabed in the 1940s. The article was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. He says this happened because a great El Niño phenomenon occurred at that time.
«It plays a vital role in regulating the stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet. And in the global rise in sea level,” point out the authors of the study. If the Thwaites Glacier collapses on its own, the sea would rise 61 centimeters. And since it is responsible for retaining the West Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could trigger further melting. It would raise sea levels 3 meters and cause catastrophic global flooding.
The Doomsday Glacier has been melting slowly and steadily since the 1940s. The El Niño phenomenon drove the warming of West Antarctic waters between 1939 and 1942. It is a fragile ice system that, once affected by a important factor, it continues to reduce.
How to stop it?
What if humans stopped “warming the planet”? At this point, the ice would probably not stop receding, the authors conclude. The Antarctic ice sheet is melting almost six times faster than it did 40 years ago. In the 1980s, Antarctica lost 40 billion tons of ice a year. That amount increased to an average of 252 billion tons per year over the past decade.
To do? World authorities must implement urgent measures. Or maybe we should all learn to swim.
