"In a worst case scenario, rising global temperatures and marine heatwaves could melt enough of the Thwaites Glacier and other Antarctic ice to raise sea levels 10 feet by the early 2100s."
"When he saw the 75-mile wide ice front of the remote Thwaites Glacier looming out of the Amundsen Sea for the first time in 2019, ice researcher James Kirkham felt a sense of foreboding.
“It was about four or 5 in the morning and just getting light, and then out of the gloom emerges this humongous wall of ice stretching for kilometers,” said Kirkham, who was on a research cruise aboard the United States Antarctic Program’s Nathaniel B. Palmer, collecting seafloor sediment samples from closer to the edge of the floating ice than ever before.
“It felt like this was the sort of thing that could cause the end of a lot of civilizations, a lot of cities, a lot of people’s lives,” he said. “It really brings home the scale of the problem of sea level rise. When you think about populations in New Orleans, in Bangladesh, and along coastlines all around the world, this is where the threat really lies.”"
Bob Berwyn reports for Inside Climate News February 26, 2024.
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