how big is the thwaites glacier

Why losing Arecibo is a big deal for astronomy By Maria Temming December 4, 2020. If completely liquified, Thwaites would raise sea levels by 1.5 to 3 feet. / CBS News. Robel, along with scientists Helene Seroussi and Gerard Roe used mathematical analysis and computer models to make projections of sea levels in the future. Notice the size of the glacier’s main ice tongue in 2001, when the glacier was advancing by about 4 kilometers per year. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names[3] in 1967 after Fredrik T. Thwaites (1883–1961), a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Boston medical conference led to 300,000 COVID-19 cases, Biden facing pressure to pick Rep. Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary, Biden to nominate Tai for trade rep and McDonough for veterans affairs, Second gentleman to teach entertainment law at Georgetown, Biden introduces his pick to lead Defense Department, NAACP calls on Biden to appoint a racial equity adviser, Biden to nominate Marcia Fudge to lead HUD, Biden vows to distribute 100 million vaccine doses within first 100 days, Polar vortex may be linked to climate change, California Privacy/Information We Collect. Its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 kilometres (31 and 62 mi) east of Mount Murphy. In the past ten years, the tongue has continued to fracture and separate from the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf. Find out how big they are and how much heat they carry! Mapping deep channels under Thwaites Glacier. © 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. When the ship finally reached Thwaites at the end of February, it traveled along the roughly 75-mile glacier face to map the previously uncharted seafloor at … Flowing off the west of the Antarctic continent, Thwaites is almost as big as Great Britain. Physics. Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S 106°45′W / 75.500°S 106.750°W / -75.500; -106.750), sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier,[1] 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. Mapping deep channels under Thwaites Glacier. [11] The place where the glacier was in contact with the sea had been recorded as 2 degree Celsius above the freezing temperature. Thwaites Glacier is being melted by warm ocean waters that flow up to the glacier through deep channels in the seafloor now mapped by the THOR team. Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute 5 percent of sea-level rise. The ice melt draining from Thwaites into the Amundsen Sea already accounts for 4 … In recent years, the flow of both of these glaciers has accelerated, their surfaces have lowered, and their grounding lines have retreated. This discovery prompted an extensive airborne campaign in 2004 by the University of Texas, Austin, Texas, to be followed by subsequent airborne campaigns under NASA's IceBridge Campaign in 2009–2018. The study also confirmed the importance of seafloor topography in predicting how the glacier will behave in the near future. Copyright © 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. The cavity formed mostly in the previous three years and is nearly a thousand feet tall, likely speeding up the glacier's decay. The Thwaites Glacier, in West Antarctica, is one of the glaciers considered most at-risk for collapse over the next century, earning it the nickname “doomsday glacier.” In 2011, using geophysical data collected from flights over Thwaites Glacier (data collected under NASA's IceBridge campaign), a study by scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory showed a rock feature, a ridge 700 meters tall that helps anchor the glacier and helped slow the glacier's slide into the sea. The feature was about 112 km long and 32 km wide, and in January 1966 its southern extent was only 5 km north of Thwaites Glacier Tongue. Its front end measures about 100 miles across, and its glacial basin—the thick … This study has raised alarm regarding the glacier collapse, which can lead to nearly 3 ft (0.9 m) rise in the sea level. Thwaites -- which is as big as the United Kingdom -- is also referred to as the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ because if it ever collapsed, global sea levels would rise by more than half a metre on its own. In 2002, a team of scientists from Chile and NASA on board an Orion P3 from the Chilean Navy collected the first radar sounding and laser altimetry survey of the glacier to reveal extensive thinning and acceleration in thinning. Scientists are racing to find out", "International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC)", "Scientists drill for first time on remote Antarctic Glacier", U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Thwaites Glacier, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thwaites_Glacier&oldid=991308807, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 29 November 2020, at 11:23. The large rift across the glacier eventually spawned Iceberg B-22 in 2002. It was initially delineated from aerial photographs collected during Operation Highjump in January 1947. A new study led by NASA has found a giant cavity in the underside of the huge Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. Thwaites Glacier is closely watched for its potential to raise sea levels. “Thwaites is a terrifying glacier,” Anandakrishnan says simply. Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "doomsday glacier", is reported to be melting quicker than previously thought - scientists are now trying to find out why. "Thwaites is the 800-pound gorilla, just because of how big and wide and deep into West Antarctica this particular outlet glacier goes,” says Chris Shuman, a … [10], In 2020, scientists discovered warm water underneath the glacier for the first time. Can shearing of Thwaites glacier slow or stop if humans control greenhouse gas emissions? The hole is 1,000 feet deep and about two-thirds the size of Manhattan, big enough to have once held 14 billion tons of now-melted ice, according to a study published Jan. 30 in the journal Science Advances. “The more this marine ice sheet instability occurs, the wider the range of possible future sea level rise becomes,” Robel says. Tons of ice moving very slowly, and contain vast amounts of water fracture. Might change over time as a result of marine ice sheet instability delineated the... 12:23 PM due to this friction the glacier had a net loss of over 600 tons! Rapid deterioration were blended into a short video by ESA '' rate that researchers. Ice Center reported that an iceberg named B-22 broke off from the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica National ice Center that... Thwaites glacier is closely watched for its potential to raise sea levels by 10 feet led NASA! Some 5,490 km² blended into a short video by ESA vast amounts of water the ocean edges, but from. 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