Thwaites Glacier face inevitable melting for 150 years

Research led by the British Antarctic Survey indicates that the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, often called the ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ will continue to lose ice for at least the next 150 years. Even under hypothetical scenarios where ocean warming is completely halted, the glacier's regression is expected to persist.

Modeling conducted by scientists from the University of California, Irvine, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggests that past ocean-induced melting has committed the glacier to a future of inevitable ice loss. While the neighboring Pine Island Glacier has shown signs of thickening, Thwaites has only seen a slowdown in its rate of retreat.

In a separate effort to preserve climate history, the Ice Memory Foundation has established the Ice Memory Sanctuary in Antarctica. Located at the Concordia station, this facility uses a cave maintained at -52°C to store ice samples from threatened glaciers, such as those from Mont Blanc and Grand Combin, to prevent the loss of millennia of scientific data.