Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier Is About To Turn Dangerous - Here's What Is Coming

Thwaites Glacier: ~75 mi (120 km) wide · ~74,000 sq mi (192,000 km²) basin · up to 26 in (65 cm) of sea level rise on its own #NaturalDisasters #EarthScience #ThwaitesGlacier What happens to the world's coastlines when the ice shelf holding back the most dangerous glacier on Earth finally lets go? Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier, is about 75 miles (120 km) wide and drains a basin larger than Florida. Its eastern ice shelf, about 1,150 feet (350 m) thick and roughly the size of Greater London, acts as a brake on the glacier behind it. It is held mainly by a single seafloor pinning point, and 20 years of satellite and GPS data show its fractures growing. British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Robert Larter said in 2026 that a breakup within the year is "very likely." The shelf itself will not raise sea level when it goes, because it already floats. The glacier behind it is the real concern: Thwaites alone holds about 26 inches (65 cm) of sea level rise, and the wider West Antarctic Ice Sheet about 10.5 feet (3.2 m). Models that best match the glacier's recent behavior project ice losses of roughly 180 to 200 billion tons a year by 2067. How fast any of this unfolds, from decades to centuries, is still an open question. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one:    / @deepgauge   #NaturalDisasters #EarthScience SOURCES 1. Shear-zone fractures and the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (Banerjee et al., 2025) — https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JF008352 2. Thwaites Glacier loss projections to 2067 (Goldberg et al., 2026) — https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118823 3. Bedmap3 bedrock map of Antarctica (Pritchard et al., 2025) — https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04... 4. Sea level rise from a West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse (Bamber et al., 2009) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... 5. Global sea level rise rate doubled in three decades (Hamlington et al., 2024) — https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01... 6. Thwaites Glacier facts (ITGC) — https://thwaitesglacier.org/about/facts 7. Thwaites ice shelf breakup outlook (Larter, Live Science, 2026) — https://www.livescience.com/planet-ea... #NaturalDisasters #EarthScience #ThwaitesGlacier Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica, Doomsday Glacier 2026, Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, Antarctic ice shelf collapse, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, sea level rise, sea level rise 2026, melting glaciers, glacier melting, climate change, Antarctica documentary, Bedmap3, marine ice sheet instability, coastal flooding, natural disasters, earth science, climate science, ice shelf breakup