Climate change activists are pointing out that the term "Doomsday Glacier" may mean the end of the world. What will that day look like?
A scary new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience states that the Thwaites Glacier may be closer to a major disintegration event than previously thought.
The study involved analyzing ridges on the sea floor. The formation of these rib-like formations shows the location of the glacier for hundreds of years.
A sudden melting event occurred over the course of six months at some point in the past 200 years using this new method of measuring the glacier's footprints. The section of glacier that caused those formations on the ocean floor retreated at twice the rate that satellite photos could see. In addition to the loss of mass scientists, there are also rarer, and scarier, rapid disintegrations.
One of the study's co-authors said in a statement to the press that they should expect big changes in the future.
The consequences of the glacier's break up are serious. According to a 2020 estimate from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, four percent of climate change-caused sea-level rise so far came from Thwaites alone.
The communications manager for the Collaboration stated that scientists want to find out how quickly this could happen.
Thwaites is in dire need of attention. It's hard not to imagine the water rising all at once when you dunk a big ice cube into a full glass.
It is possible that an overnight catastrophic inundation could happen, but the available evidence points to a scenario lasting six months or more. Six months is enough time for people who live in low-lying, coastal neighborhoods to leave, compared to the all-at-once scenario.
The terrifying new Louisiana coastline Credit: Screenshot / NOAA
Sea Level Rise Viewer can be used to see what the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would look like. Any given amount of sea level rise is factored in.
Southern Louisiana and Mississippi would be devastated by it. Even though Hudson Yards is prone to flooding, Manhattan would still get splashed. The city where I live, Los Angeles, would mostly be spared.
It is not meant to soft-pedal the horrors of sea level rise, but it is worth noting that scientists have expressed their reservations about attaching apocalyptic significance to Thwaites in particular. NASA earth scientist Eric Rignot told Ryan that it was a wake up call. The situation is summarized as if there was only one bad glacier.
Since there are other, bigger ice formations to worry about, the name "Doomsday Glacier" may actually do more harm than good. One of the main reasons scientists are uneasy about the phrase is that it suggests we are already doomed.
"Doom" is a tricky rhetorical device to use effectively in this context, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out that better climate policies are likely to result in climate benefits decades from the time they go into effect. We are not doomed, yet at the same time, nothing we do now will benefit young adults until they are older.
It may be too late to stop the so-called "Doomsday Glacier" from melting.
Thwaites is likely to hit a critical point that scientists fear will cause it to fall apart. The results won't be apocalyptic if it does happen.
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