Hundreds of earthquakes have been detected rattling Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, also known as the Doomsday Glacier — the disintegration of which could send between two and 10 feet of devastating flooding to coastal communities worldwide.
This stunning finding, published in a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that this gigantic behemoth of ice, which is almost as big as the island of Great Britain, is even more fragile than experts feared — and that world governments’ efforts to stop global warming haven’t been nearly enough.
To keep an eye on its imminent collapse, Australian National University seismologist Thanh-Son Phạm suggests in the paper that a dedicated seismic network be located and maintained on the icy continent to “monitor glacial dynamics, which may evolve abruptly in the coming decades or even years.”
The risk is high; Phạm detected a total of 362 previously unrecognized seismic events between 2010 and 2023, and they mostly occurred in the West Antarctic region, the home of the Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier, another big block of ice that’s become visibly smaller over the years due to climate change.
Glacier earthquakes are detected at around magnitude 5 on the Richter scale, and are often associated with iceberg calving in warmer months of the Arctic Circle such as the ones in Greenland. By contrast, the dynamics that drive Antarctic earthquakes are little understood because there is simply isn’t much data on them and they tend to register at a lower magnitude.
To rectify that situation, Phạm developed an algorithm to pick up wave patterns collected by seismic monitors on Antarctica. From this data, he determined that 245 of the 362 earthquakes recorded came from Thwaites Glacier, where he believes they were caused by icebergs calving off into the ocean.
Scientists are deeply concerned about the Thwaites Glacier collapse not only because of the immense amount of water it could displace, but because it acts like an icy plug on the West Antarctic ice shelf that keeps all that ice from sliding into the ocean.
More on glaciers: Doomsday Glacier Approaching Catastrophic Collapse
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