NASA's scary warning: the most dangerous glacier in the world is disintegrating

January 31, 2019

The Thwaites are similar in size to Florida and have a mbad of 14,000 million tons of ice. Its disintegration could increase the level of the oceans by two centimeters.

The glacier Thwaites He began to disintegrate. The 40-square-meter, 300-meter-high cavity that grows in its bottom confirms one of the greatest dangers in the world because of the importance of this gigantic mbad of ice to regulate the sea level.

The conclusion was made by the NASA, where they detail the need to observe in the lower Antarctic glaciers in order to be able to calculate more quickly the speed with which global water levels rise in the face of climate change.

The question is simple. Under the glacier, there are cracks that, upon entering the water, begin to disintegrate the ice atoll. In this case, the Thwaites he already has a hole big enough that, if he was defeated, he could release more than 14,000 million tons of ice.

That's Bennu, "the asteroid of death" that could collide with the Earth

"The size of the cavity under a glacier plays an important role in the fusion"He explained Pietro Milillo, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), added: "The more heat and water enter the glacier, the more it melts"

On the other hand, Eric Rignot, from the University of California and JPL, recalled that the possibility that this glacier was disintegrating had been dissipated for decades. "For years, we suspected Thwaites of not being well attached to the underlying rock. Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the details"

To place the glacier dimension in a graphical context, an example locates the Thwaites with a size similar to the state of Florida, United States. Currently, its importance makes it a key player at 4% of sea level and has enough ice to raise the ocean by two centimeters.