"Doomsday Ice" Learn the causes and risks of melting the largest glacier in the world

In conjunction with the intensification of global warming, the planet is witnessing the melting of billions of tons of glaciers at the poles, disasters that threaten to destroy coastal communities around the world, according to (Live Science) magazine earlier.

Climate change continues to show its destructive face through natural disasters and extreme weather phenomena, perhaps the most dangerous of which is the accelerated melting process in the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, which, if collapsed, would raise the sea level at least 65 cm, causing By destroying communities on islands and coasts all over the world.

The region west of Antarctica is considered one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, and the evidence is what is happening now to the ice area known officially as "Thwaites", which bears the nickname "doomsday ice" for being one of the fastest glaciers in Antarctica. Southern melt rate.

The researchers also warned that rising sea levels could lead to one catastrophe after another, which is why scientific studies are racing over time to find out the direct causes that push the “Doomsday Ice” to collapse so quickly, in addition to trying to know the time remaining in Thwaites’ watch. Temporary.

Doomsday Ice

The world's largest glacier, Thwaites, broke off unexpectedly from Antarctica 20 years ago and split into thousands of pieces.

Thwaites, in West Antarctica, is the size of Britain and is melting at an alarming rate. If it collapsed, it would raise the sea level by about 65 cm.

Since the 1980s, Thwaites has lost about 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of its ice mass, alone contributing 4% to the average annual global sea level rise, Live Science reported earlier. .

Experts pointed out that developments in the "doomsday ice" mean that a red alert has sounded in the climate crisis, stressing that it will shatter similar to the shattering of car windows, due to the acceleration of the rate of ice loss dramatically in the past three decades.

Warming pushes Thwaites to collapse

In addition to climate change factors, a study published last August in the journal Communications Earth & Environment indicated that geomagnetic field data analyzed by researchers in West Antarctica indicate geothermal flow under the "doomsday ice."

In their attempt to create new maps of geothermal flow in the region, the researchers found that the crust below West Antarctica is considerably thinner than it is in eastern Antarctica, being about 17 to 25 kilometers thick, compared to about 40 kilometers in the east, which Thwaites said. Much more geothermal than glaciers on the other side of the continent.

There are other scientific studies that point to another source of warming coming from the new warm water passages flowing under the huge “Thwaites” glacier, which will accelerate the melting of the glacier, causing what they described as catastrophic results.

While data collected by the unmanned submarine known as "Iseven" revealed that the waters below "Thwaites" have unusually warm and unexpectedly warm temperatures, with temperatures exceeding freezing degrees by at least two degrees.

Catastrophic risks

“The waters are so warm in this part of the world, as remote as it may seem, that this should serve as a warning to all of us about the potentially dire changes on the planet caused by climate change,” said David Holland, director of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at New York University and one of the lead researchers on the expedition. the climate".

And if the melting accelerates, causing Thwaites to collapse completely in the ocean, global sea levels will rise 65 cm, causing unavoidable natural disasters, on top of which comes the massive floods that will hit the planet, which will wipe out many islands from the map, as well as For the inundation of coastal cities and thus shrinking the land area in favor of the seas and oceans.

Scientists consider the "doomsday ice", which is estimated to have an area of ​​about 750,000 square miles, as the cornerstone in the center of the West Antarctic ice sheet, meaning that its melting will cause the same domino effect and thus the melting of large areas of Antarctica.