A massive hole has been discovered in the Antarctic’s so-called doomsday glacier suggesting it may be melting even faster than scientists have long feared.
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The massive Thwaites ridge would send sea levels surging by up to two feet if it dissolved completely – enough to submerge major coastal cities across the globe.
Because the UK-sized chunk acts as a barrier protecting the vast West Antarctica, its melting would also destabilise the entire region by exposing it to warmer waters.
Now, scientists say a cavity beneath the glacier is far larger than previously thought – making it far more vulnerable to collapse.
The void, in total, is about six miles long and 1,000 feet deep — representing the loss of some 14 billion tons of ice.
“The size of the cavity is surprising, and, as it melts, it’s causing the glacier to retreat,” said Pietro Milillo, a NASA radar scientist who led the new research into Thwaites.
He headed a team analysing data collected by Italian and German satellites, as well as NASA’s own Operation IceBridge, a program in which aircraft equipped with ice-penetrating radar fly over polar regions.
The researchers expected to see significant loss of ice, but the scale of the void came as a shock, added Mr Milillo.
The findings – published in the journal Science Advances – come as a team of global scientists begin the largest ever research project undertaken about the glacier.
International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration – a five-year, £38m effort led by the UK and US – will seek to understand why the it is changing so rapidly.
It will use robots and ocean weather stations, as well as more than a dozen seals fitted with sensors, to collect data about the ice and the surrounding water.