An artic glacier larger than the state of Florida could cause sea levels to increase if it melts further, scientists said.
As part of Eyewitness News' "Earth on the Edge" series, Anchor David Ono joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory team on the final day of a six-year study over the polar ice caps in Greenland.
That swift disintegration possibly occurred "as recently as the mid-20th century," Alastair Graham, the study's lead author and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida, said in a news release. The Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the widest on Earth and is larger than the state of Florida. But it's just a faction of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by up to 16 feet, according to NASA.
It was because of that research that scientists began calling the region around the Thwaites the "weak underbelly of the West Antarctic ice sheet." And then in 2021, a study showed the Thwaites Ice Shelf, which helps to stabilize the glacier and hold the ice back from flowing freely into the ocean, could shatter within five years.
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