The glacier in question is roughly the size of Florida and is melting at a fast pace, making a sizeable contribution to the global sea rise.
Scientists working in Antarctica have recently made a peculiar discovery in the vicinity of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica.
According to Live Science, having deployed a submersible robot called Icefin to the underbelly of the so called “Doomsday Glacier” which earned its moniker due to being one of the fastest melting glaciers in the region, the researchers have determined that the water temperature in the area where the ice meets the sea is about 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing temperature.
In order to accomplish this feat, the team had to drill a 700-meter deep hole through the glacier in order to get the robot to its destination, with Britney Schmidt, lead scientist for Icefin and an associate professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, stating that the submersible “represents a new way of looking at glaciers and ice shelves”.
Twaites Glacier, whose size roughly equals that of Florida, is now melting “at an increasingly fast rate”, with its melt already accounting for about 4 percent of the global sea rise, Live Science notes citing Georgia Tech.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
