Up-Close: The World’s Most Terrifying Glacier

“Thwaites demise is inevitable” (Inside Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier, PBS, August 19th, 2026).

Aboard the South Korean icebreaker Araon: “This is Thwaites, a glacier on the edge of Earth, teetering on the edge of collapse – the most consequential glacier on the planet. No ship has ever made it this far. For the scientists aboard, many of whom have tried and failed to reach this place before, the anticipation is as palpable as the beauty,” Ibid.

Global warming knows no boundaries, even the most remote where scientists’ boots on the ground tread on the planet’s coldest ecosystem. It’s there that human-generated global warming undercuts Thwaites Glacier, aka: the Doomsday Glacier. In time, it’ll collapse. Scientists are trying to discover how and when, and what to do, if anything.

The Doomsday Glacier epithet is catchy; it sticks in the mind. But is it as dangerous as it sounds? A recent documented trip aboard the South Korean icebreaker Araon, operated by the Korea Polar Research Institute, whose polar research is fully funded through 2031, answers provocative questions and gives interested parties an up-close look at the monster that rests on a deep marine bedrock of the Amundsen Sea’s continental shelf in West Antarctica. There is nothing else that compares to Thwaites. It is uniquely different.

“This is a glacier that is falling apart before our very eyes… when glaciers go at a certain speed, they just seem to rip apart, and that makes the whole physics of it overwhelming and difficult.” (David Holland, professor of mathematics and atmosphere/ocean science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences/New York University and a lead Principal Investigator on the MELT Project, aboard Araon)

Of more than passing interests, and of relevance, in October 2025, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) terminated the lease of the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer after 33 years of service. It was the United States sole research icebreaker, providing American polar scientists access to study the 75-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier. The administration’s FY 2027 budget request proposes a 54% cut to the National Science Foundation plus a 70% cut for Antarctic research to avoid scaring the living daylights out of American citizens by exposing the danger of climate change via compulsory reports required when taxpayer money funds research projects, as well as joining hands within a tight circle of climate denial right-wing zealots, aka: “the hate science cabal.” Knowledge is way too challenging to handle.

After a two-week 3,200-mile voyage from Lyttelton, New Zealand Araon reaches an ideal location at Thwaites Glacier for helicopters to reach the grounding line where the glacier underwater meets land. The objective is to drill a hole through the ice and lower instruments into the Amundsen Sea that will remain in place for one year. “The data might help scientists understand why no glacier this size on Earth is melting faster and perhaps allow them to predict when it might collapse,” Ibid.

The scientific mission requires 40 helicopter trips from Araon to a designated location on Thwaites to set up the equipment to “hot drill” into the massive glacier. The ice is 3,000 feet thick where the drill team sets up shop to inject a boiling hot water drill bit into the ice to accomplish two things: (1) send down instruments for a “snapshot” of conditions below, including temperature, salinity, and currents (2) the main objective – to send down similar sensors permanently to transmit data for one year about what’s happening to cause the glacier to melt so quickly.

The mission requires melting 20 tons of snow for hot water for the drill to effectively bore through the ice, requiring 23 hours of hard labor shoveling ice before drilling starts. Then, instruments down the borehole to measure temperature, depth, water current, and dissolved oxygen and a second time to permanently measure the underneath side of Thwaites where the glacier meets groundline.

Oops! An unexpected disaster ensues as the sensitive instruments lowered into the drill hole freeze solid at 2,300 feet below surface but still several hundred feet away from the target zone. Antarctica’s impenetrably harsh conditions sabotage the major objective of the mission. This is years of hard work dealt a ‘hard blow’ where it hurts most.

Moreover, it’s too late to do more work, out of time, temperatures drop quickly after summer ends in Antarctica. The sun sets for the last time and 24-hour darkness, the Antarctic Night, sets in. The Araon did not want to get frozen-in. They had to leave the frozen instruments at 2,300 feet below surface, frozen for eternity.

However, what was discovered is important as well as concerning. The water temperature at the bottom of the drill hole was nearly 6.5 degrees warmer than the freezing point of glacier ice in seawater, irrefutable proof that Thwaites is rapidly melting from below.

Based upon discussions with David Holland, climate scientist New York University, who has more than a dozen trips to Antarctica under his belt, not much solid data on Thwaites exist, but what is known is something mysterious about the infamous glacier’s behavior requires more in-depth research. It’s happening too fast.

By permanently placing instruments, scientists hoped to see how underwater conditions change over time. Alas, it failed. Prior missions to Thwaites to accomplish this task in 2022 and 2024 found the sea ice so thick that icebreakers could not reach the glacier. At least the Korean vessel Araon accomplished that. Still, numerous readings and experiments were conducted throughout the trip even though the prize trophy failed.

Won Sang Lee, the lead scientist aboard Araon, explains why South Korea considers polar research so important: “My country is a peninsula, so facing everywhere the ocean, so we’re really vulnerable to sea level change.” He assembled 40 top notch science researchers for the mission.

Thwaites is the one place where warm ocean water abuts the continental shelf break, flowing to the grounding line. For thousands of years, the continental shelf itself safe-guarded Thwaites from exposure as a natural underwater dam. But climate change has altered wind patterns around the Antarctic continent so that more cold, fresh water near the surface flows out to sea, creating a pathway for deep warm water to spill over or squeeze over the continental shelf that previously held it back for thousands of years. Eureka! Destabilizing Thwaites after tens of thousands of years of relative stability.

Thwaites is different, according to Dr. Holland: “It is vanishing at an astonishing rate. It is losing about 300 feet of thickness every year. Whereas typical melt in Antarctica is less than one foot at the base.”

There are no other glaciers that come close to the singularity of Thwaites, which is the size of Florida, holding enough ice alone to raise sea levels by 2.5-3 feet. Even more significantly, it is a “keystone” for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, holding back the prospect of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet cascading, which would add 10 feet to sea-level rise worldwide. Will this happen?

If it did add 10 feet, assuming very aggressive estimates, it would take several decades into 2100 and beyond. However, there are Antarctic polar scientists who claim, at polar science conferences, 13 feet this century, which makes 2030-40 look dicey, but far off the mark of mainstream science. Most climate scientists will scoff at that, maybe giggle or even laugh out loud. Still, the challenging fact remains that nobody really knows how much, how soon sea level will become a major nuisance. But it’s coming!

An undersea river valley 60 miles wide funnels the warm water to Thwaites, melting underneath. Scientists have proposed an underwater barrier or sea curtain to deflect the warm current from reaching the 60-mile-wide river valley, hoping to stop or delay Thwaites demise.

The sea curtain idea has some background: “Looking at history, in the First World War, Britain built anti-submarine nets, curtains, if you like, around most of its coast, spanning thousands of kilometers… That was a massive investment at the time, but it was an existential threat, so it had to be done.” (Scientists Weigh Giant Sea Curtain to Shield ‘Doomsday Glacier’ From Melting, Mongabay, September 24, 2025)

However, glaciologist Mike Bentley, Durham University/UK wrote a critical assessment of preserving polar ice: “Safeguarding the Polar Regions from Dangerous Geoengineering: A Critical Assessment of Proposed Concepts and Future Prospects,” including an analysis of the sea curtain concept. Alas, “none of them (five proposals) passed a set of objective criteria on feasibility, challenges of logistics, scaling-up cost, and governance issues.” The sea curtain did not escape criticism. Instead, Dr. Bentley suggests spending the >$100 billion that would be needed for a sea curtain on decarbonization or adaptation measures.

Still hopeful of something positive after the disappointing equipment failure of the main mission and traveling eighty miles away from Thwaites Glacier at 3,000 feet above the underwater valley that feeds warm water to the grounding line, the scientists deploy a pair of robotic moorings with sensors that continuously climb and descend on 1,500-foot cables attached to the seafloor, recording temperature, salinity, and the speed of the current over the next year, or two. If the water current is too fast, the sea curtain idea will be impossible. The two moorings store all data onboard; there is no real-time data. These robotic moorings will be retrieved within two years to discover what’s happening and whether a sea curtain is even possible to consider?

The scientific community remains extremely skeptical of sea curtain success for Thwaites. Still, desperate circumstances require desperate ideas. A sea curtain to block 60 miles of warm sea water from undercutting Thwaites Glacier is as desperate as it gets!

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at [email protected].