Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier melting rate increases, risks global sea level rise

Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier, the world's widest glacier, has lost over 50 billion tons of ice and the melting rate is on the rise as the continent gets warmer.

The glacier, measuring about 130 kilometres wide on the western edge of the continent, is losing more ice than it is receiving from snowfall, making it unstable. New research now points out that the massive retreat is not new and was kicked off over 80 years ago in the 1940s.

Thwaites Glacier is considered crucial in understanding the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Scientists are particularly concerned about Thwaites Glacier because of its size and location. If it were to collapse or significantly retreat, it could lead to a more rapid flow of ice from the interior of West Antarctica into the ocean, contributing to rising sea levels. The collapse could lead to a 65 cm rise in global sea level.

The ice loss in the region has been observed to be accelerating since the 1970s, however, so far it remained unclear as to when this retreat began.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, states that significant glacial retreat began in the 1940s and the findings coincide with previous work that studied retreat on Pine Island Glacier and found glacial retreat began in the ‘40s as well.

“What is especially important about our study is that this change is not random nor specific to one glacier. It is part of a larger context of a changing climate. You just can’t ignore what’s happening on this glacier,” Rachel Clark, corresponding author of the study, said in a statement.

The team of researchers suspects that the meeting was kicked off by an extreme El Nino climate pattern that warmed the west Antarctic, and since then the glacier has not been able to recover from the damage.

“It is significant that El Niño only lasted a couple of years, but the two glaciers, Thwaites and Pine Island remain in significant retreat. Once the system is kicked out of balance, the retreat is ongoing," Julia Wellner, UH associate professor of geology and US lead investigator of the Thwaites Offshore Research project added.

The Doomsday Glacier's melting remains one of the most crucial events triggered and accelerated by climate change, and could lead to submergence of several coastal regions of the world.