see url:
https://www.sciencealert.com/warm-water-underneath-the-doomsday-glacier-threatens-to-its-main-support-point
see full report...Hope y'all have learned to swim...😉
Quote<<<
A confluence of warm water is threatening to topple the very pillars
that keep the 'Doomsday Glacier' afloat.
The first measurements ever performed below the icy tongue of
Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier have now revealed a previously
underestimated flow of warm water from the east.
This inflow of heat is mixing with other waters below the glacier and
encroaching on several critical 'pinning points', researchers say,
whittling them down from all sides.
If the activity continues or, worse, speeds up, the team is worried it
could ultimately detach mass amounts of land-borne ice flowing into Pine
Island Bay from the seabed below.
The Thwaites Glacier has been nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier because it
is so very large – at 192,000 square kilometers (74,000 square miles),
it's slightly smaller than the state of Kansas in the US – and is
melting at an unnerving rate. As a result, the future of the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet remains the single largest point of uncertainty for
sea-level rise.
Because of the glacier's remote location and the perilous conditions of
the region, only a few measurements have been taken near the edge of the
ice shelf, and until now, none had been taken in the cavity below.
"The good news is that we are now, for the first time, collecting data
that is necessary to model the dynamics of Thwaite's glacier," says
physical oceanographer Anna Wåhlin from the University of Gothenburg in
Sweden.
"This data will help us better calculate ice melting in the future. With
the help of new technology, we can improve the models and reduce the
great uncertainty that now prevails around global sea level variations."
The information was collected by a submersible vehicle named Ran, which
swam deep under the thick ice to measure the strength, temperature,
salinity, and oxygen content of the underlying ocean currents.
The trip was more successful than scientists had hoped, but the results
were not so promising.
Right now, the Thwaites Glacier makes up about 10 percent of the current
sea-level rise, but because warm and salty waters tend to converge
underneath it, the ice shelf holds the potential to contribute much,
much more as the planet warms. Like removing a cork from a wine bottle,
the loss of this ice shelf could cause even more ice on the land to melt
and flow into the ocean.
>>>End of Quote
