{"id":762849,"date":"2026-06-27T02:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/762849\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T02:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:45:09","slug":"thwaites-glacier-antarcticas-doomsday-glacier-is-to-disintegrate-scientists-warn-the-ice-shelf-could-break-apart-what-does-that-mean-for-the-fu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/762849\/","title":{"rendered":"Thwaites Glacier: Antarctica\u2019s \u2018Doomsday Glacier\u2019 is to \u2018disintegrate\u2019: Scientists warn the ice shelf could break apart \u2014 What does that mean for the future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Antarctica\u2019s Go to the frozen edge of West Antarctica (or just Google it), and you\u2019ll find Thwaites Glacier \u2014 a giant wall of ice, cracking and creaking where it meets the sea. Scientists have called it the \u201cDoomsday Glacier\u201d for years, and right now, researchers say a key part (the eastern ice shelf) could break apart before the year\u2019s up.However, to be clear, according to Live Science, that doesn\u2019t mean the glacier itself is about to vanish overnight. But the loss of its ice shelf would be a dangerous turning point for the world\u2019s coastlines.<\/p>\n

\u2018Doomsday Glacier\u2019 melting away?<\/p>\n

For the unversed, located on the coast of West Antarctica, Thwaites is the widest glacier on Earth. It\u2019s about the size of Great Britain. And what makes it even scarier is what it\u2019s holding back: a huge chunk of the West Antarctic ice sheet. For decades (since the 1980s), warm ocean water has been gnawing away at its belly, melting the glacier from beneath and forcing it to retreat mile by mile. Since the early 1990s, researchers estimate that it\u2019s lost more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) of ground.The trouble now focuses on the floating ice shelf that helps hold Thwaites in place. Think of it as a buttress propping up a wall. As long as it\u2019s there, it slows the flow of ice into the sea. Without that support, the glacier can flow more rapidly into the Southern Ocean.According to scientists involved in the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, climate-driven changes in ocean circulation are bringing warmer water into contact with the glacier’s underside \u2014 cracks are spreading, the shelf is weakening, and satellite images show it\u2019s nearly at the breaking point.<\/p>\n

What happens if Thwaites Glacier is lost?<\/p>\n

If the shelf shatters, will sea levels jump overnight? No. The ice shelf is already floating, and its breakup doesn\u2019t flood the world by itself.But the real danger is what happens next: Thwaites speeds up, dumping more land ice into the ocean and raising global sea levels bit by bit. That\u2019s where the \u201cdoomsday\u201d part comes in.If Thwaites goes, seas would rise by around 2.1 feet (65 centimeters or 26 inches), which is enough to flood parts of cities from Miami to Mumbai. The full collapse could take centuries, and the timeline is fuzzy. But the signs aren\u2019t good.<\/p>\n

What do experts say?<\/p>\n

Researchers say that satellite images reveal that the Thwaites eastern ice shelf is about to detach from the glacier, per a New Scientist report. The eastern ice shelf is cracking where it\u2019s pinned by a ridge on the seafloor, and ice is peeling away twice as fast as it was just a year ago.Robert Larter, a British Antarctic Survey glaciologist working with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, put it simply: \u201cThe last bit of ice shelf in front of the glacier is poised to disintegrate. We don\u2019t know exactly how it will break up, but it\u2019s definitely going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is this happening?<\/p>\n

Warm, salty water from the deep ocean is being driven up underneath the shelf; likely because winds in the Southern Hemisphere are changing, a trend linked to climate change. \u201cThere\u2019s debate about the details, but there\u2019s little doubt that human-driven climate change is a big part of what we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Larter explained.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next, then?<\/p>\n

Thwaites’ melting away is no small feat. It\u2019s the widest glacier on Earth, with over 75 miles across and more than 6,500 feet thick in places. It\u2019s already losing hundreds of billions of tons of ice every year, and if it finally collapses, neighboring glaciers could follow \u2014 the whole West Antarctic ice sheet would be in play. That would mean another massive jump in sea level, over 10 feet (3.3 meters), enough to redraw coastlines completely.Scientists don\u2019t know exactly when this might happen. Glacier modeling is a tricky business, and every year brings new data. One recent study estimated Thwaites could be losing as much as 200 billion tons of ice per year by 2067 \u2014 staggering numbers that hint at the speed of what\u2019s changing.<\/p>\n

What does this all mean for the rest of us?<\/p>\n

If the glacier picks up speed, the effects won\u2019t stay locked in Antarctica. Low-lying nations, such as Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Pacific island states, face flooding, ruined freshwater, and mass displacement. Major cities are in trouble, too: more floods in New York and Shanghai, higher storm surges in Miami and Jakarta, tougher challenges for places with even the best sea walls, like the Netherlands.But it won\u2019t happen overnight. Even if the shelf breaks soon, Thwaites might take a while \u2014 decades, centuries, even longer \u2014 to collapse fully. Much depends on how the glacier and the rest of West Antarctica respond, and scientists are still working hard to understand those unknowns.Still, the clock\u2019s ticking. Every new fracture and every temperature reading is a signal: the world\u2019s systems are connected in ways we can\u2019t ignore. What\u2019s happening at the bottom of the planet will shape the lives of people thousands of miles away \u2014 in the near future or not far enough from now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Go to the frozen edge of West Antarctica (or just Google it), and you\u2019ll find Thwaites Glacier \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[363899,64,63,68,363900,176850,363901,4359,128,17712,126728,363898],"class_list":["post-762849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-antarctica-ice-shelf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-consequence","tag-doomsday-glacier","tag-glacier-melting","tag-global-warming","tag-science","tag-sea-level-rise","tag-thwaites-glacier","tag-west-antarctic-ice-sheet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}