What New 'Doomsday' Thwaites Glacier Research Tells Us

There is a reason Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is often referred to by its supervillain moniker. ‘Doomsday Glacier’ better sums up the consequences should the Florida-size slab of ice collapse due to rising temperatures: a global sea level rise of more than 2 ft., enough to wipe out low-lying island nations and many of the world’s major coastal cities. But while drastic, the projected timeline for such a melt, over the course of a century or more, offered some comfort—time to figure out a solution, or at least adapt. A recently completed field study, undertaken by the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), a five-year, $50 million joint U.S. and U.K. mission, however, just made that timeline harder to predict.