Overview
- Satellite images show large rifts around a seafloor pinning point and along the grounding line where the ice starts to float, with flow at the shelf front roughly tripling since 2020 to just over 2,000 meters per year.
- Ice shelves act like a brake on the glacier; with that support fading, ice upstream that the shelf once held back is now moving about 33% faster than in 2020.
- Researchers say the timing is hard to predict, with the British Antarctic Survey even drafting an “obituary” press release, and they expect the broken ice to splinter and likely remain trapped nearby rather than drift away as one giant berg.
- One study published in January projects Thwaites could be losing about 190 gigatonnes of ice per year by 2067, which would be roughly a 30% increase from current losses.
- Thwaites is about the size of Britain and already contributes around 4% of global sea level rise, and scientists warn its wider collapse could help drive more than three meters of long‑term sea level rise by destabilizing West Antarctica.