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Glimpse Beneath Iconic Glacier Reveals How It's Adding to Sea-level Rise | Nature
2023-02-23 00:00:00
Researchers have dropped a submersible vehicle down a hole in Antarctic ice to get their closest-ever look at the underside of Thwaites Glacier -- a massive and increasingly unstable body of ice that has become an icon of climate change -- and the first-ever glimpse at the spot where the ice meets the land. The observations, published in two papers in Nature on 15 February could help to pin down one of the biggest uncertainties in current projections of rising global sea levels. The studies imply that models of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and glacier flow respond to climate change are missing some important details. Incorporating these insights should clarify how and why the ice will change in the future. Eric Steig, professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted.
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