2067 ...

Thwaites Glacier is currently losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s. Credit: Jeff Goodell

The equalizer, not Robert McCall but the real one, Climate Change, is accelerating at a pace not foreseen by any viable researcher until now. 

The future of one of Antarctica's most iconic glaciers could be far more dramatic than scientists previously thought. Using satellite calibrated ice sheet models, a team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could be shedding 180–200 gigatonnes of ice per year by 2067—a rate roughly comparable to the entire Antarctic ice sheet's current mass loss. That would represent a stunning acceleration in ice loss from a single glacier and underlines urgent concerns about future contributions to sea level rise.

Thwaites Glacier is already one of the fastest changing and most closely watched glaciers on Earth, losing ice more than five times faster than in the 1990s. It drains a huge area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and outlets into the Amundsen Sea. In recent decades, observations from satellites have shown that it has been thinning and accelerating, losing more ice to the ocean than it gains from snowfall. This imbalance is what drives its contribution to global sea level rise.

Modeled extent of glacier thinning in 2067. Credit: Goldberg et al, 2026.

The new findings do not mean that Thwaites Glacier will hit a catastrophic loss rate exactly by 2067 as models represent a range of possibilities, and future climate conditions and ocean warming will shape actual outcomes. But they do show that if current trends continue and specific model assumptions hold, the glacier's mass loss could accelerate sharply within a few decades. Scientists emphasize that getting the model calibration right matters, because it helps ensure projections of future sea level rise are grounded in what the ice sheet is actually doing now.

August 4, 2067 - A guesstimate at best - Vue/Robert E.