The Thwaites Ice Front is the widest in the vulnerable region of West Antarctica (70 miles wide where it meets the ocean) and is the size of Florida in its entirety. Ice is the most feared as it rapidly deteriorates and threatens coastal cities around the world. The crust in the bottle of West Antarctica holds ten feet above sea level. The destruction of the marine extension will not increase the level of the sea as it is already floating. When it collapses, the crust pops, and the land ice is free to slide into the Weddel Sea and the Amundsen Sea, raising the sea.
All the damage to Thwaite’s stability occurred below the ice. The warm sea water softens the buoyancy and removes the soft white underbelly of the ice. Elevation also raises the ice, where warmer waters flow to the ridges and beyond the foundation line, weakening the ice flow faster, and breaking and breaking more with the threat of collapse. Water can do it because ice can no longer stand in the rock.
The ocean at the front of the ice is still very cold, about 34-36 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s above freezing, and if you think of your midday cocktail filled with ice, that’s like eating ocean temperature water on ice. As you craft your cocktail, you’ll notice that the ice is melting, which is indeed the vast expanse of sea beneath the Thwaites Glacier. The ice itself holds two feet of sea level.
Geophysicists describe the sea ice front. Like you and me, we have a history, so do the Thwaites.
A recent study by the University of South Florida:
Sometime in the last 200 years, over a six-month period, the ice front lost contact with the seabed ridge and retreated at more than 2.1 kilometers per year (1.3 miles per year) — twice the rate documented using satellites between 2011 and 2019.
“Our results suggest that the fastest pulse of retreat of Thwaites Glacier has occurred in the last two centuries, and possibly as recently as the middle of the 20th century,” Graham said.
“Thwaites is really holding its claws today, and we should see big small changes in the seasons in the future – even from one year to the next – once the ice retreats beyond the slight ridge in its bed,” said the marine geophysicist. and study co-author, Robert Larter, from the Antarctic Survey.
The language of the Thwaites is fifty miles wide. You can discriminate the tongue according to its firmness and whether it is fixed in the yoke. At risk, the western part of the language is still stable. The eastern side sheds chunks of ice like there’s no tomorrow, and the eastern side holds even more land ice. For chaos sooner rather than later is my opinion.
Twenty-two years ago, a remarkable iceberg called Iceberg B22a broke off from the Thwaites tongue in 2001 and stuck in front of it, protecting the rest of the ice from the open ocean. The ice was fifty-three miles long and forty miles wide. She too was subjected to warm waters, and the berg was weakened enough to be freed from the mountain and stuck in September of 2022. Which means that the attack on Thwaites from the ocean will be brutal. The delivery of icebergs is expected from the front following the Amundsen and Weddel glaciers entering. If you didn’t know, West Antarctica has passed the tipping point for many years now.
#Thwaites #Glaciers #sticky #claws #peeling
