Scientists Race Against Time to Drill Into Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier

Multiple Antarctic Expeditions Launch Historic Research Push

In one of the most ambitious coordinated scientific efforts in polar research history, teams from the UK, South Korea, Australia, the United States and several European nations are racing against extreme Antarctic conditions to gather unprecedented data about ice sheet stability and climate history.

First Drilling Into the Doomsday Glacier

A joint British Antarctic Survey and Korea Polar Research Institute team has reached the most inaccessible part of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, often nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier due to its potential to dramatically raise global sea levels. After weeks of weather delays, the team established camp on the glacier's surface on Monday and is now preparing to use hot water drilling technology to bore through nearly half a mile of ice.

If successful, they will deploy instruments into the cavity of seawater beneath the glacier where warm ocean currents are eating away at the ice from below. These would be the first real-time measurements from this critical location, potentially remaining in place for up to two years to monitor water movement and temperature.

The stakes could not be higher. Thwaites alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by around seventy-five centimetres. In a worst-case scenario, its collapse could destabilise the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, potentially adding three to four metres to sea-level rise over coming centuries.

Record-Breaking Sediment Cores

Meanwhile, an Australian-led expedition aboard the CSIRO research vessel Investigator has set a new record by recovering a twenty-metre sediment core from near the Cook Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. The multinational team of fifty-eight researchers will analyse the cores for ancient DNA to reconstruct ocean conditions and ecosystems up to one million years into the past.

The SWAIS2C international drilling project has also achieved a breakthrough, completing its deepest sediment core from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. The team recovered two hundred and twenty-eight metres of sediment from beneath over five hundred metres of ice, exceeding their target and capturing an unprecedented record of West Antarctic Ice Sheet history stretching back millions of years.

Racing the Clock

Time is the enemy for these expeditions. The Thwaites drilling team must complete their work and evacuate by the seventh of February or risk being stranded as Antarctic summer ends. Recent modelling suggests that without significant emissions reductions, collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet under high warming scenarios is virtually certain within the next thousand years.