A daring attempt to study Antarctica’s fast-melting Thwaites Glacier collapsed over the weekend after the scientists’ instruments became entombed within the half-mile-thick ice.
A team of British and South Korean researchers was trying to install instruments beneath the immense glacier, where they would collect data, the first of its kind, on the warm ocean waters that are melting away the ice at a rate of hundreds of feet per year.
Scientists fear that if Thwaites sheds too much ice, it could cause more of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet to start sliding rapidly into the sea, swamping coastal communities worldwide with as much as 15 feet of extra water over the coming centuries.
The team of 10 scientists, engineers and guides camped for more than a week on Thwaites to set up their complex operation. They used a jet of water heated to 80 degrees Celsius, or 176 degrees Fahrenheit, to melt a hole through the glacier, one foot in diameter and roughly 3,300 feet deep. They then lowered instruments to gather data in the water beneath the ice.
The clock was ticking: The tiny hole would refreeze in about 48 hours unless the team kept shooting hot water into it. And bad weather was on the way. If the scientists didn’t finish by Monday, the helicopters on their research vessel, the Araon, might not be able to fly the team members and their many tons of gear off the glacier before the ship leaves Antarctica around Feb. 7.
The final stretch
Early Saturday, the scientists collected preliminary measurements with a small suite of instruments that they sent through the borehole and pulled out again. They then lowered nearly 3,900 feet of cable bearing another set of instruments that would remain in place for one to two years.
But those instruments only made it about three-quarters of the way through the ice, never reaching the water under the glacier. A project almost a decade in the making had crumbled at the final stage.
“Absolutely gutting” is how Keith Makinson, an oceanographer and drilling engineer at the British Antarctic Survey, described it. “You get your window of opportunity. You don’t have forever. And you see what you can do.”
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