The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast. But recent measurements show that the melting of the glacier is speeding up, sending even more ice into the Amundsen Sea. Thwaites glacier is one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. But because the ice shelf is melting and thinning, the glacier is speeding up. That is why we are here.”The fieldwork, part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, will run until March 2020.

Source: The Guardian December 28, 2019 06:56 UTC