Two Antarctic glaciers that have long kept scientists awake at night are breaking free from the restraints that have hemmed them in, increasing the threat of large-scale sea level rise.
Located along the coast of the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, the enormous Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers already contribute around 5 per cent of global sea level rise.
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica US National Science Foundation
The survival of Thwaites has been deemed so critical that the US and UK have launched a targeted multimillion dollar research mission to the glacier, whose loss could trigger the broader collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise seas by about 10 feet (3.1 metres).
The new findings, published on Monday (Tuesday AEST) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from analysis of satellite images. They show that a naturally occurring buffer system that prevents the glaciers from flowing outward rapidly is breaking down, potentially unleashing far more ice into the sea in coming years.
The glaciers' so-called "shear margins", where their floating ice shelves encounter high levels of friction or "buttressing", are progressively weakening and in some cases breaking into pieces.
