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https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/doomsday-glacier-melting-thwaites-antarctica>
"For scientists studying Thwaites glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, life
is as remote as it gets. On a still, cloudy day, it’s white in every direction,
completely silent, and you can only get a sense of where you are from looking
at undulations of the otherwise featureless surface.
“There’s nothing else around for thousands of kilometres,” says Dr Peter Davis,
a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who has spent five
seasons in the field in Antarctica. “No aircraft, no cars – nothing.”
Just getting to Thwaites can take a month. From the UK, it’s a commercial
flight to New Zealand, then three more flights, the last one from an Antarctic
camp called WAIS Divide to what’s known as the ‘deep field’ atop the glacier.
Researchers must plan months and years ahead, packing larger items of
scientific equipment into shipping containers, and carrying with them only the
smaller, more fragile instruments and what they need to survive – including
tents and camp stoves.
An expedition like this could mean three months away from home. But what
scientists are learning here is vital to the fate of our planet.
As a spectacle of nature, Thwaites is immense – a vast ice flow, like a frozen
river, that drains an area the size of Britain as it slides towards the ocean.
However, the so-called ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is also unstable – losing ice faster
than it accumulates – meaning the whole thing will eventually melt.
Researchers want to get a better handle on when that’s going to happen, and
what it means for sea-level rise."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
