Elyse Gabor | September 7, 2022

The “doomsday” glacier is projected to melt faster than predicted. The melting of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is expected to cause a sudden rise in sea levels. 

Anna Wåhlin, a co-author of the study and a professor of physical oceanography at Sweden’s Gothenburg University, told NBC News, “Thwaites ticks several boxes of a glacier that might be experiencing a faster retreat in the future: It is retreating back into a deeper basin, it is in contact with warm ocean currents, it has a very large catchment area that stores large amounts of ice.” 

This glacier, one of Antarctica’s largest, is about the size of the state of Florida. Due to warming temperatures and recent observations, scientists predicted that it could collapse within the next 10 years.  

Experts are unsure of what the outcome of the collapse will hold. However, it is believed that the sea levels will rise about two feet.