Why glaciers are important? And why we should be worried about them.

Time to pay attention to Glaciers.

Sea-level rise are going to be one among the best challenges we face within the next century how high seas rise and the way soon features a lot to try to to with what happens here Antarctica holds the most important chunk of ice on earth its western portion alone contains enough ice to boost sea levels by quite 3 metres and it's in big trouble largely because of this the Thwaites glacier its face towers as high as a six story building and extends for 120 kilometers across the coast of West Antarctica making it about the dimensions of Florida it is a humongous glacier that reaches right into the guts of West Antarctica and that is a serious problem because within the past couple decades it's become increasingly clear the threats glacier is falling apart these are portraits of a huge rugged treacherous continent which has challenged man since first he could sail beyond the limits of his horizon and Arctica this is the Antarctic Ice Sheet it's thickest in the Middle where years and years of snowfall compacts into ice as the middle builds it pushes ice out towards the oceans for your glaciers and therefore the a part of a glacier that floats on water is its shelf ice today manmade global climate change is warming the air and water around Antarctica causing all sides of the ice sheet to melt but at very different speeds the eastern ice sheet lies totally on status above sea level which keeps it relatively safe from warm ocean water that means it's melting slowly and remains relatively stable but Western arctica is different most of it lies below sea level that means as it thins water can undermine it possibly kick-starting a more rapid collapse it's why West Antarctica is considered the most important piece of ice in the world when it comes to climate change here's another view of the bedrock underneath Antarctica's ice sheet the green yellow and red parts are land above sea level like in East Antarctica but these blue areas in western Arctic are are all below water level this area where the bedrock slopes continuously for quite a mile down and deep into the middle of Antarctica is that the fight's glacier and it might be the foremost dangerous clasher within the world surrounded by three mighty oceans but these are as much a neighborhood of Antarctica as her highest mom immediately waits is barely hanging on within the past 30 years the front of Thwaites shelf ice has lost a lot of ice causing it to retreat backwards with a smaller shelf ice to slow the flow of ice the flow of the glacier accelerates but the larger problem is the closures grounding line the final point where the glacier rests on the bedrock that grounding line has been shifting backwards as warm ocean water reaches underneath the ice shelf it's moved 14 kilometers since 1992 so I said wont to get on land becomes ice that's floating on water raising sea levels the downhill slope of the bedrock means because the grounding line moves back it lifts a good bigger slice of ice behind it off the land and into the water which accelerates the flow of the glacier into the ocean the quantity of ice flowing from Thwaites has doubled over the past thirty years and already contributes four percent to global sea level rise and scientists have recently detected an enormous cavity two-thirds the dimensions of Manhattan down here scientists believe this might mean Waits's collapse is inevitable how soon that happens is hotly debated leaving continent is awakening slowly at first but with ever gathering momentum the complete collapse of 3/8 will take centuries and it's affected by many different things from the temperature of the ocean currents to the makeup of the bedrock but research shows that humans can possibly slow or maybe stall its collapse by curbing greenhouse emission emissions soon that's important because some scientists believe collapse could start this century while others say it's already underway the collapse of weights would add about half a meter of sea level rise and trigger a way bigger catastrophe because the weights reaches into the center of West Antarctica its collapse could cause the remainder of the ice sheet to collapse with it leading to quite 3 meters of water level rise within the next few centuries that might submerge not only Miami and southern Bangladesh but also parts of Netherlands and ny City so while there is a lot of uncertainty around Thwaites one thing is obvious once it starts to collapse it won't stop