Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' is in trouble, scientists say
Tonight some worrisome new information about Antarctica's Fawaits Glacier, a glacier that, if it melts, could cause a worldwide catastrophe. Scientists have been watching that glacier nickname the Doomsday Glacier for a while now. And now a new look under it is giving scientists a better idea of what's eating away at that massive block of ice. WBZ meteorologist Jacob Wyckoff gives us a closer look. Every crack, every crash, sounds of a looming catastrophe. Two new studies published in the journal Nature paint a Doomsday Scenario, the rapid melting of the Thwate's Glacier. When we look at places like Thwates, we think of them as kind of the canary in the coal mine.
Dr. Brittany Schmidt was one of the lead scientists on this international project. Thwates is in this very precarious position where it's also holding back a great amount of ice behind it. A collapse of Thwates would almost certainly cause measurable sea level rise, about a half a meter. But because Thwates is buttressing ice, if that were to hit water. Right behind it is another three meters of sea level rise. All told, that's another 10 feet of sea for our coastline to face, one that already has little wiggle room.
These changes in Antarctica aren't happening overnight, Dr. Schmidt says. We've been observing Antarctica pretty steadily for the last 30 or 40 years, what we call the satellite era. And during that time, Thwates has gone from a really huge, massive, integrated ice shelf to just completely collapsing, where you can just see rifts and crevasses and icebergs being calved on a regular basis. What is new, however, is the technology used in gathering this data. For the first time, special probes were sent into and under the glacier, allowing scientists to directly measure the ice mass lost in the deep ocean. Ice fin is basically an underwater robotic oceanographer.
What it allows us to do is to take the instruments and put them down through a hole in the ice, and then explore underneath the ice. The groundbreaking data they collected, confirming the worst. Thwates is melting faster and faster. Still, Dr. Schmidt remains optimistic that humans can stay in front of this disaster. When we see what humans did with CFCs, that was an easier fix. You just stop using hairspray, right? The 80s ends.
But we knew we could make a change. When you see things like that, you know humans are capable of this. Meteorologist Jacob Wykhoff, WBZ News.
WBZ News Evening, Jacob Wycoff, Doomsday Glacier, Antarctica