Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is very large and has been dubbed the doomsday glacier because if it melts, it can cause a global-scale disaster. Worryingly, Thwaites is predicted to melt faster than previously thought.
As quoted by Live Science, the melting of Thwaites is rapid and could collapse completely in just a few years, according to scientists at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting.
Thwaites, located west of Antarctica, is the largest glacier on Earth with a width of 120 kilometers and a depth of between 800 and 1,200 meters.
Warming ocean temperatures due to climate change not only melt Thwaites from the bottom, but also weaken its position and make it unstable.
When the glacier weakens, it is likely that there will be a domino effect where the glacier is prone to cracking on its surface so that it breaks apart. That could be three years from now.
Thwaites has lost 1,000 billion tons of ice since 2000 due to global warming and the amount of ice lost each year has doubled.
If Thwaites melted completely and the water from there flowed into the oceans, sea levels around the world would rise by more than 65 centimeters. This can be a big disaster, especially for people in coastal areas.
"And it may trigger sea levels to be even higher, up to 3 meters, if Thwaites brings the surrounding glaciers to melt," said Ted Scambos, coordinator of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC).
So it is stated that there is no other way to prevent it other than anticipating climate change and global warming very seriously so that this doomsday glacier will still exist in the future.