Click ‘Gatekeepers of Antarctica’ to see the story. Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers are outlet glaciers with ice shelves. Ice shelf: a tidewater (coastal) glacier or ice sheet that flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface, where it floats.If an outlet glacier reaches the coast (some terminate inland), it can become an: Outlet glacier: drains inland glaciers/ice sheets through gaps in the surrounding topography.This makes it particularly vulnerable to undercutting by warming waters ( Fig. Marine ice sheet: an ice sheet whose base is on ground below sea level.The existence of these ice sheets are why we are still in an ice age. There are only three in the world: Greenland and Antarctica which has two: the WAIS and the EAIS (Fig. Ice sheet: continental glaciers that have joined together to cover the surrounding land in an area greater than 50,000 km². See the 2022 State of the Cryosphere report and Wellington University’s Antarctic Research Centre for up-to-date research.Nicknamed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’, it acts like a plug, holding back the ice sheets. It’s ~75% the size of New Zealand, and increasingly warm ocean water is melting it from below, undercutting it so that it’s collapsing. The Thwaites Glacier on the WAIS is currently of greatest concern.Upper ocean temperatures to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula have increased over 1☌ since 1955.1) has been one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, with air temperatures of 3☌ five times the average rate of global warming due to polar amplification. Over the past 50 years, the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula ( Fig.See the 2022 IPCC State of the Cryosphere report (summarised below) and Wellington University’s Antarctic Research Centre for up to date research.Increasingly warm ocean water is melting it from below, undercutting it.
2), which makes it particularly vulnerable to collapse, and that would allow the inland ice sheet to flow faster into the ocean. The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) covers islands and land below sea level ( Fig.Temperatures here reached 38.5☌ above normal in 2022, a new world record for the largest temperature excess above normal ever measured at an established weather station. However, recent research (2023) shows that this is not the case melting is contributing to sea level rise. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) was considered relatively stable ( Fig.Ice loss from 1994 to 2017 = 9 trillion tonnes many glaciers and ice shelves along the Peninsula have retreated and some have collapsed completely.1) has been one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, with air temperatures five times the average rate of global warming due to polar amplification. Antarctica is almost twice the size of Australia and contains 30 million cubic km, or 90% of the world’s freshwater that, if it all melted, would add ~60-70m to sea levels.
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