A rock core extracted from the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica has provided humanity with both very good news and very bad news.
The Thwaites Glacier has long been shown to have a profound impact on humanity, especially for coastal nations, as its melting could submerge many cities and villages. However, the extent of its potential melting and whether it can recover has always been a significant question.
A team of scientists from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) set out to investigate this by drilling deep into the ice to extract a rock core containing thousands of years of geological data.
Campsite of the research team on Thwaites Glacier – (Photo: BERKELEY EARTH SCIENCE CENTER).
According to a publication in the journal The Cryosphere, the Thwaites Glacier has the potential to change far beyond what humanity can currently imagine.
Just 5,000 years ago, it was 35 meters thinner than it is today. Over the course of about 3,000 years, it gradually recovered to its current thickness.
This brings very bad news: The glacier has a very high likelihood of melting as temperatures rise.
With the loss of tens of meters of ice, the Thwaites Glacier could indeed bring about a real “apocalypse” for many coastal living areas, as it causes sea levels to rise dramatically, impacting the surrounding ocean environment, ocean currents, and underwater life; directly or indirectly affecting humans in many ways.
This is a looming threat as global warming from human activities continues to cause glaciers worldwide to melt.
However, the findings also come with good news, as reported by SciTech Daily, indicating that the glacier’s natural recovery capability is as remarkable as its potential for destruction.
Nonetheless, the biggest challenge remains understanding how this process can be reversed. It is not simply a matter of cooling the climate.
“On the surface, these results may seem like good news – the Thwaites Glacier could regenerate from a smaller configuration in the recent past. However, this process takes 3,000 years,” said geologist Joanne Johnson from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a collaborator with the ITGC and co-author of the study, as quoted by SciTech Daily.
According to Dr. Johnson, this poses a challenge under the warm climate conditions we anticipate in the coming centuries. “That timeframe is longer than what we can wait for,” he added.
