‘Doomsday Glacier’ the size of Florida disintegrating faster than thought
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The entire glacier melting isn't something that's going to happen in the reasonably near future, so the notion of 3-10 foot sea level rise is irrelevant. ...and sadly they don't publish actual expected sea rise numbers from actual expected melt amounts.
The particular thing about Thwaites is that instead of melting along one narrow edge (a wide, but not tall area) as it has until recently, it might shift to melt from a very much larger area. The article says the observed rate of melting has doubled, due to unknown mechanisms. The article does not say that the increase has stopped or that the doubled rate is the final melting rate, or even speculate that it's likely to be the case.
The point is that they don't publish ANY numbers that aren't at the extreme end of what's possible.
I wonder what the extreme end actually is. The glacier (the part on land) is sliding down into the sea at a speed of half a centimeter per minute now, and the main factor holding the speed down is disappearing. How fast can ice slide?
Also, the article is about the doubling of the retreating rate vs the previous decade as published on this paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01019-9
> Thwaites grounding zone retreated at a rate of >2.1 km per year—twice the rate observed by satellite at the fastest retreating part of the grounding zone between 2011 and 2019
That is not a realistic outcome.