This ‘doomsday’ glacier is more vulnerable than scientists once thought | A massive Antarctic glacier that could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts is far more exposed to warm ocean water than previously believed.

7 comments

1. The paper is [here](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2404766121)

2. Well we just found a lot of oil in Antarctica so unfortunately that glacier is just gonna have to melt and if some people have to die for it then it is a sacrifice I am certain someone is willing to make.

3. “We don’t know how fast this intrusion of water is melting the ice,” Morlighem said. “It could be small, in which case we would not need to include this process in models.” However, he said, the process could also be large and melt through more than ten meters (nearly 33 feet) of ice thickness per year.”

   Well then I’m really looking forward to the new adjusted modelling…

   “But, Anderson said, knowing exactly how fast warm water will cause melting requires detailed mapping of the seafloor, which remains inadequate for the task in a place as remote as Thwaites.”

   I guess we’ll never know…

4. Warm water is arriving by currents.

   So, water can be cooled. How could we cool warm water over a large enough area to effect the many GWh of heat it is carrying, so reducing its temperature by a few degrees?

   Phytoplankton blooms in the upper layer of the ocean shortens the mean-free path of the sunlights penetration into the water column, so that means it heats up the surface layer more, which gets hotter. That surface water evaporates more, and in addition increasing the top layers temperature, reduces mixing, causing stratification.

   Within the more stratified top layer is light absorbing phytoplankton that release compounds that change surface tension and promote more evaporation. Hotter surface waters also conduct more heat over them to the air. This facilitates heat rejection to space.

   So, ocean seeding of some warm water currents, via fertiliser addition, should increase heat rejection locally, leading to heat staying more in the tropics or temperate regions, and less heat making it to your polar regions.

5. I’ve been watching climate change long enough to see that predictions tend to be more conservative than how the events finally occurred. If they say it’s going to melt in ten years I’d give it three.

6. Rising sea levels – faster than expected. I’ve been put down on Reddit so many times by chuckling condescending moderates ridiculing me as uninformed over the years for saying exactly this I can’t even count.

7. This will happen, and probably sooner than expected, so prepare for things to get real weird fam.