They found the staircases, called terraces, as well as crevasses in the ice base are melting rapidly. The observations Icefin made of the seafloor and ice around the grounding zone provide more detail on the picture of how melting varies beneath the ice shelf. ![]() The vehicle is designed to access such grounding zones that were previously almost impossible to survey. Britney Schmidt, of Cornell University in the US, and a team of scientists and engineers deployed a robot called Icefin through the 600m deep borehole. What we have found is that despite small amounts of melting there is still rapid glacier retreat, so it seems that it doesn’t take a lot to push the glacier out of balance.”ĭr. If an ice shelf and a glacier are in balance, the ice coming off the continent will match the amount of ice being lost through melting and iceberg calving. “Our results are a surprise but the glacier is still in trouble. Peter Davis, who’s an oceanographer at BAS and lead author on one of the studies, says: Credit: Peter Davis – British Antarctic Surveyĭr. The MELT team undertook observations of the grounding line (where the ice first meets the ocean) beneath the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in order to understand how the ice and ocean interacts in this critical region.īorehole drilling site on Thwaites Glacier 2022. The new data were collected as part of the MELT project, one of the projects in the UK-US International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, one of the largest international field campaigns ever undertaken in Antarctica. Much of the ice sheet is below sea level and susceptible to rapid, irreversible ice loss that could raise global sea-level by over half a meter within centuries. Thwaites Glacier is one of the fastest changing glaciers in Antarctica: the grounding zone - the point where it meets the seafloor - has retreated 14 km since the late 1990s. In these areas, as well as in cracks in the ice, rapid melting is occurring. But the authors were surprised to see the melting had formed stair-case-like topography across the bottom of the ice shelf. ![]() Credit: Peter DavisĪ layer of fresher water between the bottom of the ice shelf and the underlying ocean, slows the rate of melting along flat parts of the ice shelf. ![]() The MELT team melted large amounts of snow to create the hot water to drill through Thwaites Glacier to reach the ‘grounding line’. Despite the suppressed melting the glacier is still retreating, and these findings provide an important step forward in understanding the glacier’s contribution to future sea-level rise. Novel observations from where the ice enters the ocean show that while melting beneath much of the ice shelf is weaker than expected, melting in cracks and crevasses is much faster. It is one of the most critical glaciers in West Antarctica, and its potential collapse could trigger a significant rise in sea level, which could have catastrophic consequences for coastal communities worldwide.Īpparently, the rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is driven by different processes under its floating ice shelf than researchers previously understood. ![]() New data from an international expedition and underwater robot Icefin beneath the remote Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier, in Antarctica. The icefin robot under the ice near McMurdo research station, operated by the US Antarctic Program.
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