It’s a central process to the melting of Thwaites that has larger implications for the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a whole. This area is a crucial place of transition for glaciers, marking where the base of the ice sheet meets warm water and begins to float, becoming an ice shelf. The huge ice stream in West Antarctica is currently melting, and scientists want to understand its likely future contribution to sea-level rise. If all of Thwaites' frozen bulk were to give way, it would add 80cm to the height of the world's oceans. The US icebreaker Nathaniel B Palmer has left Punta Arenas in Chile to begin an expedition to Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier.
From the ITGC. TARSAN's "Cavity Camp" on Thwaites Glacier. "How much, how fast?
Data that they collected through March will give insight into ocean conditions further away from Thwaites that could be contributing to its deformation. Scientists say the glacier is responsible for about four percent of global sea level rise. But the thing that I was most excited about was this pressure vessel,” Scambos said.
Marine mammals will be captured on islands near the glacier and fitted with sensors. TARSAN is one of the ITGC’s eight research projects that study the entire glacier, tackling the question of the glacier's deterioration from a variety of different angles and scientific fields. Photo credit: Ted Scambos The sheer scale of the glacier captivated Ted Scambos as he looked on from his plane window, thousands of feet above the ice. Getting to the bottom of Thwaites’ decline—literally. "I think a lot of people think what we are seeing anthropogenic (human-driven) change, but we don't yet have all of the links in the chain to say that definitively.". The TARSAN project is investigating atmospheric and oceanic conditions on two ice shelves on the coast near Thwaites Glacier. However, statements or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Shear margins on glaciers are where the fast moving ice flowing out of the glacier meets a boundary of more stationary ice. By Julia Medeiros, University of Colorado Boulder, © 2020 CIRES is a partnership of NOAA and the University of Colorado Boulder. US collaborator Dr Rebecca Totten Minzoni, from the University of Alabama, said: "By discovering the history of Thwaites Glacier under past climate and ocean conditions, we can assess the stability of the glacier today. The walls became clear and transparent, like windows into the glacier, with the light from the GoPro extending out into what otherwise would have been utter darkness. The team at Mt. Some scientists have argued that Thwaites is already in this state. Once the vessel plunged into the salty waters of the Amundsen Sea, it still had a ways to go before reaching the seafloor. One of the studies to be conducted off the Palmer is a seal-tagging exercise. Though these signs were not unexpected due to previous measurements and modeling, to see it first hand made the evidence even stronger to Vaughan. Snows fall inland and these compact into ice that then flows out to sea. Operational teams, in both the UK and US, will continue to work with ITGC scientists and support staff working on ITGC (including collaborators from Sweden, Germany and Korea) to support them in planning future fieldwork. TIME investigated shearing activity on the sides of the glacier with radar, in preparation for a bigger group that will be conducting research next year. The survival of Thwaites has been deemed so critical that the United States and Britain have launched a targeted multimillion-dollar research mission to the glacier. “Even if we suspected that some things happening underwater were as they were.”, Investigating the influence of both land and sea. The Palmer's 52-day cruise is just one part of a five-year, joint US-UK research programme to investigate the glacier. Murphy collected four bedrock samples by drilling through the surface, while the Hudson Mountains team used radar to identify good drill sites for the next research season.