Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier is 'holding on by its fingernails'

Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier is 'holding on by its fingernails', experts say, after discovering that it has retreated twice as fast as previously thought over the past 200 years. Worrying times: Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier is 'holding on by its fingernails', experts say, after discovering it has retreated twice as fast as previously thought over the past 200 years For the first time, scientists mapped in high-resolution a critical area of the seafloor in front of Thwaites that gives them a window into how fast the glacier has retreated and moved in the past The Doomsday Glacier The Thwaites glacier currently measures 74,131 square miles – around the same size as Great Britain. The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would cause an increase of global sea level of between one and two metres, with the potential for more than twice that from the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. To collect the imagery and supporting geophysical data, the team, which included scientists from the US, UK and Sweden, launched a state-of-the-art orange robotic vehicle loaded with imaging sensors during an expedition in 2019 Scientists Robert Larter and Alastair Graham look on in awe at the crumbling ice face of the Thwaites Glacier The R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer research ship photographed from a drone at Thwaites Glacier ice front in February 2019 'This was a pioneering study of the ocean floor, made possible by recent technological advancements in autonomous ocean mapping and a bold decision by the Wallenberg foundation to invest into this research infrastructure,' said Anna Wåhlin, a physical oceanographer from the University of Gothenburg who deployed Rán at Thwaites.