Scientists Are Racing to Figure Out Why This Giant Glacier in Antarctica Is Melting So Fast

By Tom Metcalfe - Live Science Contributor 16 hours ago



he giant Thwaites Glacier is one of the fastest-melting glaciers on the coast of Antarctica, and scientists are trying to find out why.
(Image: © NASA/OIB/Jeremy Harbeck)

A robotic submarine is about to descend into a dark, water-filled cavern in Antarctica, to try to find out why one of the continent's largest glaciers is melting so fast.

In the next few days, scientists will lower the torpedo-shaped robot, dubbed Icefin, into a nearly 2,000-foot-long (600 meters) borehole in the ice of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. Previously, scientists used Icefin robots to study the sea life beneath the ice in the Ross Sea off of Antarctica, but this new project has a different purpose.

A key aspect of the robot's mission will be to study the glacier's "grounding line," the point where it separates from the continental bedrock and starts to float on the waters of the Amundsen Sea.

The Thwaites Glacier covers more than 74,000 square miles (192,000 square kilometers) — an area larger than Florida — and is more than 900 miles (1,500 km) from the nearest U.S. and British Antarctic research bases. It's one of Antarctica's fastest-melting glaciers, having lost an estimated 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice since the 1980s. Observations indicate that the glacier is now melting even faster than before, and scientists want to find out why.

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