Studying a retreating glacier in the Antarctic.
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The continent is shaped like a hitchhiker’s fist, its scraggly thumb pointing west. Thwaites, which is named for a late, eminent geologist, is on the southern side of the thumb, where it meets the hand. There are bigger glaciers elsewhere in Antarctica, and they are also showing signs of weakness, but Thwaites is especially concerning. Its adjoining ice shelf—a large floating expanse of ice, which extends from the glacier out over the water—acts like a cork in a wine bottle, holding much of the rest of the glacier in place. If the cork decays and gives way, the glacier could begin to flow rapidly, and eventually it and a larger stretch of surrounding ice in West Antarctica might slide or calve into the ocean. Thwaites is often known as the Doomsday Glacier, because, in this worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise by several feet or more, inundating many of the world’s low-lying coastlines.
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