Episode #51 Super Glacier Catastrophy Impending?

Transcript: <br /><br />Hey. Good morning. This is Robert at English 360. And today we talk about Glacier. Glacier as the Americans like to call it. Basically, glaciers are big bodies of ice and they hold a lot of freshwater and scientists believe that it is catastrophic if they were to melt because the sea levels we don't see new rapidly. There is an article in the news which talks about Doomsday Glacier. It says there's a Doomsday Glacier, which could raise sea level by several feet, two three feet, basically about a half meter or more.<br /><br /><br />And it's trying to survive by its fingernails. Now, obviously, glaciers are not living animals. It's figurative. This glacier is on the edge. It may melt completely. And if it does, we will be in big trouble. Let's see why. Antarctica's so-called Doomsday Glacier, nicknamed because of its high risk of collapse and threat to global sea level, has the potential to rapidly retreat in the coming years, amplifying concerns over the extreme sea level rise that would accompany its potential demise.<br /><br /><br />Now, this is a difficult word to pronounce. The Thwaites glacier, capable of raising sea level by several feet, is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms. In a study published Monday in the Journal Nature Geoscience. Scientists mapped the glacier's historical retreat, hoping to learn from its past what the glaciers will likely do in the future. They found that at some point in the past two centuries, the base of the glacier dislodged from the seabed and retreated at a rate of 1.3 miles or about two kilometres per year.<br /><br /><br />That's twice the rate that scientists have observed in the past decade or so. So basically this huge glacier, which is rooted to the seabed now, is starting to detach. And one basic problem is that if it detaches from the seabed, it's going to melt more quickly. That swift disintegration possibly occurred as recently as the mid-20th century, according to a study.<br /><br /><br />It suggests that Thwaites has th