The enormous ice shelf that provides critical support to the Thwaites Glacier appears to be on the brink of breaking away. This development could have significant implications for the glacier’s stability.
Recent satellite imagery reveals that the Thwaites ice shelf, an expansive 45-kilometer-wide structure of floating sea ice adjacent to the glacier, is showing signs of separation. The images highlight severe fractures around the area where the ice shelf is anchored to the sea floor and abuts the glacier itself.
In addition to these fractures, the ice shelf is now moving at a much faster pace, further indicating its imminent detachment from its current position. This accelerated movement is a red flag, suggesting that the shelf may soon part ways with the glacier it helps stabilize.
“Suddenly, large areas are just falling to pieces,” remarked Christian Wild from the University of Innsbruck in Austria during an interview with NewScientist.com. Such observations underscore the urgency of monitoring this critical ice mass as it undergoes rapid changes.
“Suddenly, large areas are just falling to pieces,” Christian Wild at the University of Innsbruck in Austria told NewScientist.com.
“It looks like a windscreen that’s shattering.”
The British Antarctic Survey predicts the ice shelf’s “final demise could happen suddenly” and has even prepared an ‘obituary’ press release for it.
Though it’s impossible to predict exactly when the ice shelf will rip away from the Thwaites glacier, scientists expect the impact of it detachment will be significant.
It could even open the door to the glacier itself collapsing.
Without the ice shelf to buttress it, the Thwaites glacier is predicted to start moving and shrinking at a rapid rate.
It’s been shrinking for years and is currently responsible for about 4 per cent of all global sea-level rise.
That number is predicted to spike when the Thwaites ice shelf detaches.
It could rise to catastrophic levels if the glacier itself collapses, which scientists say could happen suddenly and without warning.
If or when the Thwaites glacier collapses, it’s expected to set off a domino effect across the West Antarctic ice sheet that could result in sea levels rising by more than 3m.
That would change coastlines across the globe and may put some of Australia’s most iconic beaches underwater.
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