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Hundreds of Iceberg Earthquakes Rattle Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier

Capsizing icebergs are violently clashing with the crumbling end of the Doomsday Glacier

Thwaites Glacier is sometimes known as the Doomsday Glacier. If it were to collapse completely it would raise global sea levels by 3 meters, and it also has the potential to fall apart rapidly.

scientificamerican.com/article




Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is seen in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on March 2, 2024. More and more ice continues to break off from the unstable glacier and slip into the sea. ©ESA/Copernicus Sentinel-1 Thwaites Glacier is sometimes known as the Doomsday Glacier. If it were to collapse completely it would raise global sea levels by 3 meters, and it also has the potential to fall apart rapidly. About two-thirds of the events detected – 245 out of 362 – were located near the marine end of Thwaites. Most of these events are likely glacial earthquakes due to capsizing icebergs. The strongest driver of such events does not appear to be the annual oscillation of warm air temperatures that drives the seasonal behavior of Greenland glacier earthquakes. Instead, the most prolific period of glacial earthquakes at Thwaites, between 2018 and 2020, coincides with a period of accelerated flow of the glacier’s ice tongue towards the sea. The ice-tongue speed-up period was independently confirmed by satellite observations. This speed-up could have been caused by ocean conditions, the effect of which is not yet well understood.
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