Doomsday Glacier Cracks Could Raise Sea Levels And Flood Coastal Cities Worldwide

ANTARCTICA – The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is nearly 80 miles wide, making it the largest glacier in the world by width. If it collapses entirely, the resulting changes could raise global sea levels. Scientists are racing to understand the forces at work before it’s too late.

To better understand how this could unfold, researchers developed a new way to study the cracks – or fractures – that weaken the massive ice shelves connected to glaciers, Earth.Com reported.

These shelves float on the ocean, but they’re anchored to land. When they fracture and collapse, they speed up the melting of the glacier behind them.

Using years of NASA satellite data, the team focused on vertical fractures in the Antarctic ice sheet – the largest on the planet, even though it’s losing about 136 billion tons of ice each year.

Their attention was on the Thwaites Ice Shelf, a critical extension of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica.

Often called the “Doomsday Glacier” for its potential to raise sea levels by up to 11 feet, Thwaites is especially vulnerable. The ice shelf acts like a stopper, slowing the glacier’s flow into the ocean. If that shelf collapses, it could trigger a chain reaction of rapid ice loss.

Rethinking how fractures form

The new method was developed by a research team at Penn State University. Their findings zero in on how fractures form and evolve in ice shelves – and why existing models aren’t enough.

Shujie Wang is an assistant professor of geography, a faculty associate in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State, and a co-author of the study.

“We know little about fractures, and their behavior is much more complex than conventional models suggest,” she said. “Conventional models depend largely on simplified models and scarce, hard-to-obtain field observations.”

The Thwaites Ice Shelf is particularly unstable. It changes quickly, its surface is heavily fractured, and the ice flows at a fast pace.

Researchers describe it as a final barrier that keeps the rest of the glacier from disintegrating.

High-resolution views of ice breaking

To capture the changes in the ice shelf’s structure, the research team used data from NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite. It collected measurements between 2018 and 2024.

This satellite tracks ice elevation, sea level, and other Earth features with remarkable precision.

The team built a new two-step process to analyze the satellite data. It lets them create high-resolution elevation profiles and visual cross-sections of fractures in the ice.

Building on a previous algorithm Wang had designed to detect individual cracks, the new method gives researchers a better view of how different types of fractures form and evolve over time.