Swirling underwater “storms” are aggressively melting the ice shelves of two vital Antarctic glaciers, with potentially “far-reaching implications” for global sea level rise, according to a recent study.
Antarctica is like a fist with a skinny thumb stuck out toward South America. Pine Island Glacier is near the base of this thumb. Thwaites — known as the Doomsday Glacier because of the devastating impact its demise would have on global sea level rise — sits next to it.
Over the past few decades, these icy giants have experienced rapid melting driven by warming ocean water, especially at the point where they rise from the seabed and come afloat as ice shelves.
“We are looking at the ocean on very short ‘weather-like’ timescales, which is unusual for Antarctic studies,” said Yoshihiro Nakayama, a study author and an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College.
The underwater storms they focused on — called submesoscales — are fast-changing, swirling ocean eddies.
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Swirling underwater “storms” are aggressively melting the ice shelves of two vital Antarctic glaciers, with potentially “far-reaching implications” for global sea level rise, according to a recent study.
Antarctica is like a fist with a skinny thumb stuck out toward South America. Pine Island Glacier is near the base of this thumb. Thwaites — known as the Doomsday Glacier because of the devastating impact its demise would have on global sea level rise — sits next to it.
Over the past few decades, these icy giants have experienced rapid melting driven by warming ocean water, especially at the point where they rise from the seabed and come afloat as ice shelves.
The new [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01831-z), published last month in Nature Geosciences, is [the first](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/undersea-storms-are-melting-antarctic-glaciers-below) to systematically analyze how the ocean is melting ice shelves over just hours and days, rather than seasons or years, its authors say.
“We are looking at the ocean on very short ‘weather-like’ timescales, which is unusual for Antarctic studies,” said Yoshihiro Nakayama, a study author and an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College.
The underwater storms they focused on — called submesoscales — are fast-changing, swirling ocean eddies.