Thwaites Glacier

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Thwaites Glacier
Tongue of the Thwaites Glacier

Tongue of the Thwaites Glacier

location Marie Byrd Land , West Antarctica
Coordinates 75 ° 30 ′  S , 106 ° 45 ′  W Coordinates: 75 ° 30 ′  S , 106 ° 45 ′  W
Thwaites Glacier (Antarctica)
Thwaites Glacier
drainage Amundsen Lake
Template: Infobox Glacier / Maintenance / Image description missing

The Thwaites Glacier is a very large glacier in Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica . In 2010 it had an area of ​​around 192,000 km² - an area more than twice the size of Austria or the size of Florida.

location

It flows around 50 km east of Mount Murphy to the Amundsen Sea , into which it flows around 30 km northeast of the Bear Peninsula on the Walgreen coast in the form of a glacier tongue over 160 km long and 30 km wide . 60 km of the tongue are floating and impede navigation in an east-west direction. The glacier is located in an area with increased volcanic activity.

history

Historical

The United States Geological Survey mapped the entire glacier based on its own measurements and aerial photographs by the United States Navy from 1959 to 1966. The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names named it in 1967 after the glaciologist Fredrik T. Thwaites (1883–1961) from the University of Wisconsin .

present

Due to its properties, this massive glacier is closely monitored and analyzed by NASA and scientists for scientific scenarios of man-made climate change .

Importance as a climate indicator

The glacier has an important function: Together with the Pine Island Glacier, it acts as a brake block for the much larger West Antarctic ice sheet . Should this one day melt, numerous coastal cities could be flooded due to a sea level rise of more than one meter.

In the region of the Thwaites Glacier, the atmospheric and oceanic conditions change particularly significantly. Rapid ice losses are the result (see consequences of global warming in the Antarctic ). The touchline of the glacier, i.e. H. the line at which glacier ice touches the ground for the last time and from which it begins to swim lies on a submarine ridge. The ice there becomes thinner, the touchdown line goes back towards a deep sea basin. If the glacier loses contact with the ground over the entire surface of the ridge and floats up, this accelerates its flow rate and thus its melting significantly over the next few decades.

The thawing of the Thwaites Glacier is already responsible for around four percent of the global sea level rise. The collapse of this glacier alone would raise the level of the seas by about 65 centimeters.

A complete melting of the glacier would also include adjacent ice masses in the process and cause the sea level to rise globally by three meters over a period of several hundred years.

In early 2020, researchers from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) took measurements to develop scenarios for the future of the glacier and to predict the time period for a possible collapse: The erosion of the glacier from warmed ocean water seems stronger than expected. The researchers noted with concern: At the baseline of the glacier, the temperature of the water is already more than two degrees above freezing point. A trigger of the expedition were u. a. NASA geo-explorations . The BBC named the glacier "Doomsday Glacier" as an indication of the importance of this climate indicator.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d DER SPIEGEL: A colossus thaws - DER SPIEGEL - science. Accessed January 30, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Shola Lawal: Temperatures at a Florida-Size Glacier in Antarctica Alarm Scientists . In: The New York Times . January 29, 2020, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 30, 2020]).
  3. ^ Robin McKie: Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet . In: The Observer . August 12, 2017, ISSN  0029-7712 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 10, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b WORLD: Antarctica: Researchers worried about a cave in the Thwaites glacier . In: THE WORLD . January 31, 2019 ( welt.de [accessed January 30, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Pietro Milillo et al .: Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. In: Science Advances. Volume 5, No. 1, 2019, eaau3433, doi: 10.1126 / sciadv.aau3433
    Researchers find gigantic cavity in Antarctic glaciers. In: Spiegel Online from January 31, 2019. Accessed February 2, 2019.
  6. ↑ Ian Joughin, Benjamin E. Smith and Brooke Medley: Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica . In: Science . March 2014, doi : 10.1126 / science.1249055 .
  7. ↑ TA Scambos u. a .: How much, how fast ?: A science review and outlook for research on the instability of Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier in the 21st century . In: Global and Planetary Change . June 2017, doi : 10.1016 / j.gloplacha.2017.04.008 .
  8. ↑ ITGC: Scientists drill for first time on remote Antarctic Glacier. In: thwaitesglacier.org. January 28, 2020, accessed January 31, 2020 .
  9. ^ A b Justin Rowlatt: Journey to the 'doomsday glacier' . In: BBC News . January 28, 2020 ( bbc.com [accessed January 30, 2020]).