As climate change continues to increase global temperatures, scientists are focusing on the most sparsely populated continent on the planet: Antarctica. The largely frozen southern continent has an immense amount of land ice that is gradually melting, causing sea levels to rise all over the world. A recent study revealed the so-called "doomsday" glacier, actually called Thwaites Glacier, began to lose large amounts of ice in the 1940s and is still melting today. If Thwaites collapses entirely, it would cause a domino effect of other melt events that could ultimately increase sea levels by 10 feet (3 meters). Even if global temperatures rise by 2°C or more above pre-industrial levels, as appears highly likely without major economic and social change, the resulting Antarctic melt could cause global sea levels to rise by as much as 6.6 feet (2 meters) by 2100.
Now there is more bad news from Antarctica: Scientists publishing in the Journal of Climate report that a "record-shattering" heat wave which struck East Antarctica in March 2022 was powered by the most extreme "atmospheric river" ever observed in the region, a freakish occurrence tied to climate change.
