Antarctica's Doomsday glacier began its path of rapid melt 80 years ago — 30 years earlier than first thought — following an extreme El Niño, a new study has revealed.
The Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the doomsday glacier because of its potential to increase sea levels by two feet (60 centimeters), is located in West Antarctica and is roughly the size of Florida. It has been melting rapidly since the 1980s — contributing to a 4% rise in global sea levels with the loss of roughly 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice.
