The looming collapse of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier threatens to send sea levels surging to devastating new heights.
But scientists have now proposed a wacky plan to prevent the so-called ‘Doomsday Glacier’ from crumbling.
An international group of scientists wants to build a 492ft-tall (150m), 50-mile-long (80km) wall running along the seabed 2,132ft (650m) beneath the surface.
Dubbed the Seabed Curtain, scientists claim this ambitious project could halt the Doomsday Glacier’s retreat and avert the devastating consequences of global warming.
The Doomsday Glacier is a vast, slow-moving river of ice roughly the size of the UK that traps enough fresh water to raise sea levels a staggering 2.1ft (65cm).
Scientists have found that the main cause of its retreat is a current of warm water creeping into the gap between the glacier and the continental shelf – melting the ice from below.
The Seabed Curtain would anchor in front of the glacier’s most vulnerable sections and prevent this warm current from reaching the ice.
While the potential costs could reach well over $80billion (£58.7billion), the scientists say this is nothing compared to the destruction their wall could help prevent.
The Seabed Curtain is currently in its initial phase of development, and the researchers haven’t yet finalised the design.
However, the basic plan is to use a reinforced tensile fabric suspended by buoyant elements and anchored to the seafloor by a heavy foundation.
This would stretch all the way around the Antarctic glacier like a colossal beach windbreak, preventing warm water from coming in and trapping cold water near the ice.
In one possible design, this would be a single structure, while others suggest using multiple fragmented sections to prevent the wall from acting like an enormous parachute.
Early modelling conducted by a group of glaciologists in 2024 tentatively suggested that this approach could slow glacial melting by a factor of 10 in some locations.
However, this has never been tested in practice, and researchers don’t really know whether this would work or what the consequences would be.
To learn more, scientists plan to install a 492ft-long (150m) and 132ft-tall (40m) section of curtain at the Fjord Ramfjorden in mainland Norway.
The researchers are also conducting an ecological study at the Fjord Mijenfjorden in Svalbard.
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Would YOU support spending billions to prevent rising sea levels?
The Thwaites Glacier (pictured) is a vast, slow–moving river of ice roughly the size of the UK that traps enough fresh water to raise sea levels a staggering 2.1ft (65cm)
This fjord is protected by a large island near the mouth, so comparing it to nearby fjords should tell researchers what kinds of impact a large barrier might have on a polar ecosystem.
However, given the astronomical costs of creating the wall, critics may well wonder why scientists would bother investigating the solution at all.
According to the leaders of the Seabed Curtain Project, these costs are totally justified by the enormous threat posed by the Thwaites Glacier.
The Doomsday Glacier traps an enormous amount of fresh water and holds it on land, so that it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise.
Driven by rising ocean temperatures, Thwaites’s ice loss already accounts for four per cent of all global sea level rise.
If it were to collapse, all of that water would be dumped directly into the ocean, and global sea levels would increase dramatically.
Additionally, scientists believe that this would destabilise the entire Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to several metres of sea-level rise over the coming centuries.
Marianne Hagen, co–lead of the Seabed Curtain Project and former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, told IFLScience: ‘For me, it’s kind of a no–brainer.
Previous studies have found evidence of storm–like circulation patterns beneath Antarctic ice shelves that are causing aggressive melting beneath the ‘Doomsday Glacier’
‘If it’s possible to take 65 centimetres of global sea level rise off the table for everybody, with one single targeted intervention in one location, I’m willing to explore it. I think we have an obligation to do so.’
Worryingly, the scientific evidence suggests that Thwaites may already be on its way to collapse.
A recent project to drill through the glacier’s main trunk discovered turbulent ocean conditions and relatively warm water, capable of ‘driving substantial melting at the ice base’.
Current estimates suggest that it could totally collapse within the next few decades if nothing is done to slow climate change or prevent it from melting.
Ms Hagen adds: ‘If you compare [the project costs] with the coastal repair and damage cost, it’s a fraction. The cost of this project will run in billions. The cost of the damages will run into trillions.’
However, the project is not without its critics, and other scientists have accused the Seabed Curtain of being a ‘distraction’ from the real issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In a paper published last year, scientists from Monash University slammed the untested idea for risking ‘intrinsic environmental damage.’
The researchers added that the wall could not be built at a sufficient scale or speed to tackle the crisis in time.
THE RETREAT OF THE THWAITES GLACIER
The Thwaites glacier is slightly smaller than the total size of the UK, approximately the same size as the state of Washington, and is located in the Amundsen Sea.
It is up to 4,000 metres (13,100 feet thick) and is considered a key in making projections of global sea level rise.
The glacier is retreating in the face of the warming ocean and is thought to be unstable because its interior lies more than two kilometres (1.2 miles) below sea level while, at the coast, the bottom of the glacier is quite shallow.
The Thwaites glacier is the size of Florida and is located in the Amundsen Sea. It is up to 4,000 meters thick and is considered a key in making projections of global sea level rise
The Thwaites glacier has experienced significant flow acceleration since the 1970s.
From 1992 to 2011, the centre of the Thwaites grounding line retreated by nearly 14 kilometres (nine miles).
Annual ice discharge from this region as a whole has increased 77 percent since 1973.
Because its interior connects to the vast portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that lies deeply below sea level, the glacier is considered a gateway to the majority of West Antarctica’s potential sea level contribution.
The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier would cause an increase of global sea level of between one and two metres (three and six feet), with the potential for more than twice that from the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
