Doomsday ...

 

Photograph: Erin Pettit

The Thwaites Glacier is melting, thanks to us. Doomsday, the name applied to Thwaites, is apropos because if it goes, a 10' sea level rise becomes reality.

Doomsday Glacier

That’s because Thwaites—aka the Doomsday Glacier—is deteriorating fast, losing 50 billion tons of ice to the sea each year. Stretching 75 miles across the coast of Antarctica, encompassing an area about the size of Florida, it’s currently responsible for 4 percent of global sea level rise. (It straddles land and sea: The bit on land is known as an “ice sheet,” but where it floats it’s an “ice shelf.”) If it melted completely, the glacier would not only contribute over 2 feet of sea level rise, but as it slid into the ocean, it would also tug on the glaciers surrounding it, further destabilizing them. That’d add another 8 feet of sea level rise.