It is just remarkable that not one news network has reported on the extraordinary fuckery unfolding at West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. Call me old-fashioned, but I think coastal residents and government planners may want deserve to know.
Only Daily Kos has reported this critical news (for the second time). The Sea Ice Forum is aware, and a few scientists and activists that have yet to abandon Twitter.
From my diary December 12, 2022:
In 2001, a significant iceberg named Iceberg B22a broke from the Thwaites' tongue and became stuck in front of the doomsday glacier’s marine extensions tongue. For twenty two years B22a protected the calving front from the open ocean.
The iceberg was fifty-three miles long and forty miles wide. It, too, is subjected to warming waters, and the berg thinned enough that it was freed from the undersea mount it was stuck on in September of 2022.
That means a brutal assault on Thwaites from the stormy southern ocean will occur. A flotilla of icebergs calving from the front is expected following the iceberg exiting the Amundsen Sea and entering the Weddel. If you did not know, West Antarctica passed the tipping point many years ago. We are witnessing the rapidity of the consequences.
Ice is breaking off the tongue, as seen in the above timelapse. The melange has shattered as well; a melange refers to a mix of sea ice and icebergs cemented together in front of the glacier, which also has a role in protecting the shelf. There may be a connection between the Thwaites iceberg with Pine Island Glacier and other dominoes yet to fall. We don’t know yet.
If you are a praying person, pray that no Antarctic heatwave develops anytime soon.
