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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world's most dangerous glacier could collapse over the decades and cause many cities to flood, the NASA's US space agency said yesterday.
NASA said the Thawitis Glacier was about to collapse, threatening to raise sea level by about 2.5 meters.
His discovery is a massive cavity under the glacier, west of Antarctica.
NASA scientists said the cavity's length was the same as Chard's skyscraper in the British capital, the equivalent of 10,000 football fields, the Sun newspaper reported.
In a study published in the journal Advanced Science, scientists pointed out that the cavity was expanding and that the glacier would degrade rapidly, eventually causing its collapse and could "lead to a global catastrophe".
"The cavern under the glacier plays an important role in melting ice," said Pietro Melelu, a NASA scientist. "When the temperature and the water rise below, they will quickly melt."
The Thawitis iceberg is estimated at about 182,000 square kilometers, about half the size of Britain.
If the glacier melts, the sea level will rise by two feet, or about 60 centimeters, which will cause coastal floods that will force hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes around the world.
But what worries NASA is the protective effect of the Thawites on nearby glaciers, which prevents them from melting, otherwise the small glaciers would dissolve and dissolve, so that the sea level would rise to more than two and a half meters if it were melted.
According to scientists, many cities around the world are at risk of drowning and the streets will become water supply channels.
It should be noted that an earlier study found that two-meter rise in sea level would lead to the penetration of large areas of England, such as Kent, Portsmouth and Cambridge, among others.
It should be noted that NASA discovered this huge cavity while working on a satellite dedicated to photography under the ice of Thawites River.
"We had doubts for years about the fact that Thawites was not directly connected to the rocky layer underneath," said Eric Ringnot, a scientist at the University of California, "Thanks to the new generations of satellites, we can now learn more. "
The findings of NASA scientists highlight the need to monitor and track areas under glaciers to assess the impact of climate change.
According to Ringnot, it is necessary to understand and understand the details of melting glaciers to predict the impact on sea level rise over the next few decades.
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