The $30 million toe in the water

Scientists warn that the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the Doomsday Glacier, is on the brink of collapse due to warming oceans. The eastern ice shelf could crumble away within months, raising sea levels by 65cm and plunging entire communities underwater.

According to the British Antarctic Survey, the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) is a wall of ice attached to the glacier's eastern flank, holding back the flow of ice into the sea. This supporting barrier is over 1,150 feet (350 metres) thick and covers 580 square miles (1,500 square kilometres) - about the area of Greater London.

However, the Antarctic's warming oceans are now thinning this frozen bulwark at an alarming rate. Dr Robert Larter, marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey, warns that the shelf's breakup is 'very likely to happen sometime this year .'

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While scientists don't think the collapse of the entire Thwaites Glacier is imminent, multiple studies now suggest that the TEIS is on the brink of failure. Speaking in an interview with Live Science, Dr Larter says: 'The last bit of ice shelf in front of the glacier is poised to disintegrate.'

We don't know quite how this ice shelf is going to break up, but it's definitely going to go. The main reason for this dramatic transformation is that the ice shelf is thinning from below as warm water flows beneath the ice. A recent expedition to drill through the ice sheet found that the waters flowing beneath Thwaites are warming, driving the thinning process and weakening its structure.

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Satellite images show that new fault lines are opening up in the ice shelf at an increasing rate. Critically, these fissures are now forming along the 'grounding line', the point where the floating ice shelf meets the bedrock below. This suggests that the physics deep within the ice has changed, and that the shelf is now teariing itself apart as ice is rammed into this 'pinning point'. Researchers have found that the Thwaite Glacier's ice shelves are melting from beneath, weakening the buttresses that hold back the flowing glaciers behind.

It's tearing away from the glacier at the moment, and its internal structure is getting more and more fragile,' Dr Larter said. 'You can see the fractures and rifts growing in sequences of satellite images.'

A familiar pattern from the 2019 crash

Between January 2020 and January 2026, researchers found that the TEIS' flow rate had tripled to just over 2,000 metres per year. In the five months at the start of this year, the ice shelf has accelerated even more. The situation is now so dire that Dr Larter told New Scientist that the British Antarctic Survey has already prepared an 'obituary' press release for the shelf.

If the TEIS collapses this year as Dr Larter predicts, many scientists are concerned that it could accelerate the degradation of the entire Doomsday Glacier. Without the ice sheet providing a buttressing back-force, some predict that the glacier will accelerate its slide into the sea. Eventually, that could lead to the entire glacier collapsing on a timescale that ranges from decades to centuries, depending on the model used.