Talk:Thwaites Glacier

Untitled reference

• Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. Science Advances 30 Jan 2019 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Conan (talk • contribs) 21:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Untitled text & reference

RESEARCHERS FIND MAJOR WEST ANTARCTIC GLACIER MELTING FROM GEOTHERMAL SOURCES "Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where accurate information has previously been unobtainable.

The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by UTIG will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts." https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uota-rfm060514.php https://phys.org/news/2014-06-major-west-antarctic-glacier-geothermal.html

Variable crustal thickness beneath Thwaites Glacier revealed from airborne gravimetry, possible implications for geothermal heat flux in West Antarctica (2014) "Thwaites Glacier has one of the largest glacial catchments in West Antarctica. The future stability of Thwaites Glacier's catchment is of great concern, as this part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has recently been hypothesized to already be en route towards collapse. Although an oceanic trigger is thought to be responsible for current change at the grounding line of Thwaites Glacier, in order to determine the effects of this coastal change further in the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet it is essential to also better constrain basal conditions that control the dynamics of fast glacial flow within the catchment itself. One major contributor to fast glacial flow is the presence of subglacial water, the production of which is a result of both glaciological shear heating and geothermal heat flux. The primary goal of our study is to investigate the crustal thickness beneath Thwaites Glacier, which is an important contributor to regional-scale geothermal heat flux patterns. Crustal structure is an indicator of past tectonic events and hence provides a geophysical proxy for the thermal status of the crust and mantle. Terrain-corrected Bouguer gravity disturbances are used here to estimate depths to the Moho and mid-crustal boundary. The thin continental crust we reveal beneath Thwaites Glacier supports the hypothesis that the West Antarctic Rift System underlies the region and is expressed topographically as the Byrd Subglacial Basin. This rifted crust is of similar thickness to that calculated from airborne gravity data beneath neighboring Pine Island Glacier, and is more extended than crust in the adjacent Siple Coast sector of the Ross Sea Embayment. A zone of thinner crust is also identified near the area's subaerial volcanoes lending support to a recent interpretation predicting that this part of Marie Byrd Land is a major volcanic dome, likely within the West Antarctic Rift System itself. Near-zero Bouguer gravity disturbances for the subglacial highlands and subaerial volcanoes indicate the absence of supporting crustal roots, suggesting either (1) thermal support from a warm lithosphere or alternatively, and arguably less likely; (2) flexural support of the topography by a cool and rigid lithosphere, or (3) Pratt-like compensation. Although forward modeling of gravity data is non-unique in respect to these alternative possibilities, we prefer the hypothesis that Marie Byrd Land volcanoes are thermally-supported by warmer upper mantle. The presence of such inferred warm upper mantle also suggests regionally elevated geothermal heat flux in this sector of the West Antarctic Rift System and consequently the potential for enhanced meltwater production beneath parts of Thwaites Glacier itself. Our new crustal thickness estimates and geothermal heat flux inferences in the Thwaites Glacier region are significant both for studies of the structure of the broader West Antarctic Rift System and for assessments of geological influences on West Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics and glacial isostatic adjustment models." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X14005780

Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (2014) "Thwaites Glacier is one of the West Antarctica's most prominent, rapidly evolving, and potentially unstable contributors to global sea level rise. Uncertainty in the amount and spatial pattern of geothermal flux and melting beneath this glacier is a major limitation in predicting its future behavior and sea level contribution. In this paper, a combination of radar sounding and subglacial water routing is used to show that large areas at the base of Thwaites Glacier are actively melting in response to geothermal flux consistent with rift-associated magma migration and volcanism. This supports the hypothesis that heterogeneous geothermal flux and local magmatic processes could be critical factors in determining the future behavior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4078843/

The actual paper DOES mention the geothermal heat flux under the glacier, so the reporters have no excuse for not mentioning it... https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/3861/2018/tc-12-3861-2018.pdf

Sea level rise

" This study has raised alarm regarding the glacier collapse, which can lead to nearly 3 ft rise in the sea level." Can someone clarify what the glacier's contribution to sea level rise is likely to be? Another source says "more than half a meter", which may or may not be the same as "nearly 3 ft". Also the paragraph has a confusing mix of imperial and metric units (celsius and feet), and the sentence quoted (and much of the paragraph) seems to be lifted directly from the Time of India article cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.57.196.246 (talk) 20:20, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Infobox needs basic date added

Infobox needs basic date: area; length; width; max & min elevation, etc. — Lentower (talk) 17:59, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Belatedly, I added area and width. However, max elevation does not appear to be listed in any RS I could find, only ice thickness. Neither is length: I suppose it can be worked out from area and width, but this is probably not an exercise we should be engaging in. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:42, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Update

https://www.livescience.com/agu-antarctica-thwaites-glacier-future 199.127.133.181 (talk) 17:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Map please!

Can someone find/create a map for this? Thanks! -TenorTwelve (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The EOS article in the para below has such a map. But I couldn't get it to work! -- except as the tiny thumbnail. --Pete Tillman (talk) 23:13, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I added nine more images recently, including some more maps. The one which currently illustrates the "Importance" section is probably the closest to what you have been looking for. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:44, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Robot submersible investigates the bottom of Thwaites glacier

https://eos.org/articles/icefin-investigates-a-glacial-underbelly “Icefin” Investigates a Glacial Underbelly -- An instrument-laden submersible reveals where—and how rapidly—the Antarctic glacier is melting." EOS News, 15 March 2023. Interesting article, sort of a good-news, bad news combo. The good news is that "the underside of Thwaites is melting far less rapidly than predicted by models." So "the glacier’s lower melt rate [may] translate into slower retreat in the future." Time will tell. Pete Tillman (talk) 23:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Added to the article now, along with the original studies and an additional supporting reference. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 15:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Thwaites Glacier/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 23:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Looking at sources first:

• What makes geographic.org a reliable source? It appears they're republishing National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency data, which itself is reliable, but the website is run by Information Technology Associates per the copyright notice, which is a private company. Is there evidence that geographic.org is treated as reliable by other sources? Or could we get this data directly from the agency?
• FN 34 is a broken link, which means I can't determine reliability. This is the link. Is it possible to find an archived copy of the link?
• The link to Eos in FN 36 goes to the wrong article.
• What makes climatetippingpoints.info a reliable source? It appears to be a blog. Is the author a subject matter expert?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this review!

• Looking more closely, both of those links essentially duplicate GNIS and ITGC citations which are already present. Removed.
• I did find an archived copy, but I really wasn't happy with that source. I had to do more searching and rewrite those sections considerably in the light of information found in more reliable sources.
• Added a quote to Eos reference to clarify that it is the right citation both times it's used in the article.

  Sorry, I wasn't clear. I fixed the issue I was referring to in this edit -- the link was going to the Greek goddess of dawn. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:12, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• Adam Armstrong McKay is a climate scientist and the lead author of the Science paper cited in the preceding citation. That paper is currently paywalled, and the paywall won't be lifted until September (since Science adopted rules making all articles OA 12 months after the initial publication), so the author's blog on his own work is the most convenient way of citing key figures from that paper. (Not to mention that the author's comments are meant to be easier to understand than the formal language of the paper itself.)

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

More comments:

• I think some editing is needed to comply with WP:LEAD, which requires that the lead be a summary of the body -- that is, everything in the lead is also in the body. The basic geographic information about the location of the glacier is only in the lead at the moment. Just changing the first section's title to "Glacier location and features" and adding the basic information there would probably be enough.
• FYI, it's not necessary to add citations in the lead. It's fine to do so if you want to (and some editors do it) but it's not required because everything in the lead has to be in the body too, and should be cited there.
• The sentence starting "Other Antarctic features ..." seems a bit off-topic.
• The research history you cover starts in 2001. There were plenty of papers about the glacier before then; of course there's no requirement to recount the entire research history related to the glacier, only the current state of research, but have you looked through these older papers to see if there's anything relevant? Good article status only requires broad coverage, not comprehensive coverage, so it's probably OK to stick with the more recent papers, but I thought I'd ask. I'll look through sources I have on hand too and see if I can find anything interesting.

I'm going to pause there and put this review on hold to let you respond to the above points, and will pick up again once those are settled. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

• Done.
• Well, this citation style what I have seen on every other climate change-related article I edited, so I followed it as well.

  It's fine; just wanted to make sure you were aware of the option. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• Moved to UW-Madison's page.
• Well, some of those papers (i.e. Mercer and Hughes papers from circa 1970s) are already mentioned in the previous sections, such as "Importance". My intention was that "Research" would focus specifically on the studies which had taken place after it became accepted that the glacier is highly vulnerable (since that is essentially the only reason anyone writes about it today) but I suppose this section title might be too vague for that. Perhaps another title would fit more? I.e. "Research into glacier retreat"? "Study of glacier's vulnerabilities"? Something like that?

  I think it's OK as it stands -- so long as you're aware of the research that's been done and don't think anything more needs to be mentioned. I can certainly understand that research only sped up when the importance of the glacier was recognized. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Have struck everything above, and left a couple of notes. I'll continue with the review either tonight or tomorrow. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Second pass

Reading through again. I'm copyediting a bit as I go; please revert if I screw anything up.

• "This immense size means that the repeated ice calving events at the glacier's marine terminus - the point where grounding line is in contact with water": I don't follow this. I thought the shelf prevented calving at the glacier's terminus; calving happens at the edge of the shelf.
  • The ice shelf only covers the east of the glacier. The reference makes it clear those calving events occur in the west, enabled by the loss of the original ice tongue. Perhaps the sentence could be clarified to reflect this, but it might look awkward to mention the ice shelf and the ice tongue in passing right before explaining them properly.

    OK, but the point of the sentence is just the enormous mass that's being shed. Can we bypass the question the "marine terminus" raises in my mind and perhaps other readers' minds by making it just "This immense size means that when ice calves from the glacier, it sheds enormous mass"? A separate point: I don't think it's clear anywhere in the subsections of the "Location and features" section that the western side of the glacier calves at the grounding line and has no shelf. The image File:Miles_2020_Thwaites_tongue_shelf.png is unclear -- is this just the eastern half of the GL? I assumed the black area was open water implying the GL is not a calving front anywhere on this image, at least. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:24, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

    After I found another image and rewrote some of the section, I think that this point is now much clearer than it was before, and there is no need to remove the mention of a marine terminus. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:35, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

    That's a helpful map, and I agree we don't need to drop mention of the marine terminus now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

• The image in the infobox says "Thwaites glacier", but since it shows open water, surely that's the ice shelf?
  • See above. The source, NASA, captions this image "Thwaites Glacier", so we are only following their lead.

    OK; I'll hold off on striking this until the point above is dealt with. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:24, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

• Suggest explaining the acronyms in the ice tongue image, or else removing them from the image.
  • Done.
• The explanations of the various tongues is confusing. Here's what I think I understand:
  • Thwaites Glacier Tongue and Western Glacier Tongue refer to the same thing. This was a floating part of the glacier, which was present in 1947, had grown by 1967, and completely disappeared in 2016.
  • Thwaites Iceberg Tongue refers to a group of icebergs aground in the Amundsen sea, separated from the Thwaites Glacier Tongue, initially by 3 miles, but further away now. These were created by calving from the Thwaites Glacier Tongue, prior to (and after?) 1967.
  • Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue is another group of icebergs broken away from the Thwaites Glacier Tongue, with the calving completed by 2012, and presumably having started after 1967 since the icebergs broken off before that formed the Thwaites Iceberg Tongue, not the Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue.
    If this is all correct I have a few questions/suggestions.
  • If the grounding line is the dividing line between the glacier and the shelf, why is a floating section of ice referred to as part of the glacier? E.g. "was a narrow, floating part of the glacier".
    • Not quite: grounding line is the point at which glacier's weight is floating in the water, rather than being supported by the bedrock. See this article for an explanation. This means that the part of the glacier past the grounding line (such as the ice tongue) is not directly relevant to sea level rise, as its weight is already in water. However, it still helps to buttress ice on bedrock, much like the ice shelves: the difference between the two is that the ice shelves do not have an unbroken ice connection to the glacier itself.

      Struck. I wasn't aware of the difference in definition between "ice tongue" and "ice sheet", and that's not the fault of this article. If I can think of a way to clarify this without cluttering the article with too many inline definitions I will suggest it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

  • The image caption says "Thwaites Ice Tongue"; I think this should be "Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue" if I have the definitions above correct.

    I think this is still an issue? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

    It actually seems like I made a larger mistake by reading too much into the reference explaining the 2023 paper with the algorithm (formerly phys.org, now ESA). It appears it was the only one which really used that wording ("Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue") and even then, it was largely interchangeable. Other references still use the same name even when describing how it broke up. I decided to remove this phrasing and changed section title to "Post-2010 break-up", since all recent sources agree on that. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

  • A map showing all of these together, along with some of the landmarks mentioned in the text such as Bear Peninsula, would be very helpful. I've spent some time trying to correlate visually the different images, particularly File:Miles 2020 Thwaites tongue shelf.png, File:Wolovick2023 Thwaites flows.jpeg, and File:Dotto 2022 PIB meltwater.png, and it's hard to do -- they don't overlap exactly, they're at different scales, they don't clearly delineate glacier and sea boundaries, and one uses different notation for latitude and longitude and has a different orientation. A single map that gives a simple geographic overview would help. I wouldn't fail this nomination if you can't come up with such a map, since the information is here, but it would really help readability and I think would be a must if you want to take this to featured level.
    • I understand your point about the maps, but scientific figures tend to be like that more often than not. I'll see if I can find something better, but I'm not hopeful.

      OK. I won't strike this but as I say I wouldn't require this for GA, and like you I'm not hopeful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

      I was able to find a satellite photo now. It's not perfect (it appears "flipped", since it has east on the left and west on the right) but it is a much better explanation of ice shelf vs. ice tongue and where the grounding line is, than anything else available, particularly in conjunction with the Miles 2020 graphic. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• "In 2023, scientists from University of Bristol and University of Leeds had repurposed a machine learning algorithm normally used in microbiology to identify crevasses in Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue and project how they may affect its stability." This sounds interesting but you're not citing any conclusions from this, and presumably this is too recent to have commentary from other scientists or for its predictions to be validated, so is it worth including?
  • Well, it's cutting-edge research. For now, they have simply demonstrated they can do it: more specific findings are bound to be in future papers 2-3 years away. We could remove this reference until the time they produce follow-up research, but this article isn't really suffering from the lack of space, so I don't think it's necessary.

    In addition, I looked at it again and found some notable details about the recent ice tongue retreat rates. Included them as well. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• "seminal 1968 paper": cut "seminal", unless we have sources using similar language this is a bit dramatic.
  • The NASA source doesn't use this exact word, but it certainly seems to consider that paper as the root of current research into the glacier. Considering that it was published only a year after the glacier got its name in the first place, it's unlikely there was anything earlier. I am not firmly invested in that wording, but I am not yet convinced it is unjustified.
• "Overhead view of Thwaites Glacier, with arrows marking the warm water currents leading to its demise." Suggest "projected demise"; it's not dead yet ....
  • Done.
• "its strongly negative mass balance": is there numerical data for the mass balance that could be quoted?
  • Yes, the source mentioned mass balance. Added.

    Also found an update on more recent mass balance when going back to the ITGC reference. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:02, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• "which was later attributed to the activity of subglacial lakes upstream of Thwaites": as written this implies these lakes were not under Thwaites, but that seems unlikely. Should this be "the activity of subglacial lakes upglacier"?
  • That was a typo: what [FN 60] said was "Finally, in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, subglacial lake drainage events upstream on Thwaites Glacier may have caused a minor speedup of the glacier near the grounding line in 2013" - i.e. upstream of the Amundsen Sea and the grounding line. Corrected. This should also answer your reference spot check concerns.
• "with an estimated cost of $50 million across the entire research period": what's the intended research period?
  • The previous sentence says 5 years. The sources are a little contradictory on when it began: some say it was founded in 2017, but others that the research did not start until 2018. It's probably the latter, since we are now in 2023, and it doesn't seem like the project has been wound down yet. Then again, perhaps it will get extended anyway, or already has been. This is why I would rather not elaborate even more.

    Fair enough. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:45, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

• "increasing its annual contribution to sea level rise from 4% to 5% in the near term": this is precise but a bit abstract. Can we phrase this in terms of sea level rise -- e.g. since sea level rise is 4 mm/year, if I remember correctly, this means Thwaites contribution to sea level rise will increase from 1.6 mm/decade to 2 mm/decade in the near term. We'd have to source the current sea level rise rate to do this, but I think it would make the effect more concrete for the reader.
  • I'll have to search more carefully for any figures like that. Found this source, but it is from 2018 and doesn't seem to explicitly consider near-term ice shelf loss. (Still seems worthy of inclusion, though.)

    Striking; I don't think I can fairly hold up GA status for this, since it's correct as written, but it would be nice to make it easier to grasp if you run across a source that allows you to do so. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:47, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

  Well, I couldn't find a source saying this specifically, but I did add a note from ITGC that the 14-year sea level rise from Thwaites alone was 2.07 mm, which is probably the next best thing. Plus, I added the 30-year and 100-year projections from the 2018 paper above. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• The three sentences starting "The lead of ITGC" seem a bit repetitive -- they say "This glaciologist said it was daunting; these ones said it worrisome, this one said it was going to happen soon. I think it would be better to make this more concise -- perhaps something like "These results have been described by glaciologists as "daunting" and "worrisome", Erin Pettit, an ITGC, said that Thwaites, along with the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ..." The details of exactly which glaciologists said the first two things can be left to the citations, I think; the point being made gets a bit diluted if we add that information to the sentence.
  • User:EMsmile has already edited that passage (and other parts of the article) a bit. Not sure if you already consider those changes sufficient.

    Still seems repetitive to me. Why do we need three separate statements about the gravity of the situation, all from the last couple of years? It's daunting, it's worrisome, it's going to happen soon. Citing all three sources isn't the problem, it's that the reader sees the same information three times, rather than one statement. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:51, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

  Condensed. Instead of this, I used the 2014 paper cited later in the article a bit more, to clarify what the "rapid collapse" of the glacier means in scientific terms. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• "after the warming passed 1 °C (1.8 °F) in recent years": it's best to avoid language like "recent" because it gets out of date. Can we make this "since <year>"?
  • Changed to "early 21st century".
• "volume of ice equivalent to 40 cm (15+1⁄2 in), rather than the 65 cm (25+1⁄2 in) contained in the full glacier": what do these measurements refer to? Obviously not the volume of ice in the glacier.
  • Clarified.

I'll look at the image licensing next and then do some spotchecks on the sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

No image issues. Will do spotchecks next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:42, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Spotchecks. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FN 21 cites "This is more than twice as large as all of the sea level rise which occurred between 1901 and 2018 (estimated at 15–25 cm (6–10 in)), though only a fraction of the total sea level rise which would be seen in the future, particularly under high warming." I can't find this in the source. I tried searching for 2018 and got nowhere, and I also couldn't find Thwaites. Assuming that the numbers are sourced, are you drawing this comparison yourself, or is the comparison made in the sources? If so I think this might be edging into synthesis of the sources -- see WP:SYNTH for the relevant policy.
  • Turns out I linked to the older IPCC report, so the figure wasn't there. Corrected. But yes, it's true that this comparison wasn't explicitly drawn in either source. I don't think it's remotely as egregious as the examples on WP:SYNTH page, but if you think it still needs to be removed, then I will do so.

    I think I'm OK on the SYNTH issue, and I see the total 1901-208 number in the source, but where does the future rise number come from? If it's from another page in the same source I would just add that to the citation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, page 21 shows just how much larger the future sea level rise can get. Noted that page number now. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 11:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• FN 11 cites "If confirmed, this would mean that the melting of Thwaites Glacier can be expected to accelerate at a similar rate for the next century, regardless of whether ocean temperature keeps going up, or stops increasing at all." Verified.
• FNs 60 & 61 cite "In early 2013, a minor speedup of ice flow near the glacier grounding line was detected, which was later attributed to the activity of subglacial lakes upstream of Thwaites." I can see the second half of this in FN 61, but I can't find the relevant bit in FN 60 to support the first half -- can you point me at the right page?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:21, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright, concerns about the images are a bit thorny, but I have addressed the rest.

InformationToKnowledge (talk) 19:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Everything has now been addressed; passing. Congratulations! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:42, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Excellent! So excited to have the first GA under my belt! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:10, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Removed mention of people's names and their affiliations

I hope this is not controversial but I have just condensed some of the sentences by removing a mention of the names of scientists (especially those who are not notable in the Wikipedia logic, i.e. no Wikipedia articles) and their affiliations or the journal papers where they published in. I think all this is maybe relevant for an academic literature review but not for an encyclopedic article. Readers can find author names and universities if they click on the reference at the end of the sentence or paragraph. I think we should focus on the science and the observations, which less emphasis in the prose on where the scientists worked at the time, which journal they published in, or where the interview was published etc. I haven't removed it in all sentence but felt that those details were provided too often. EMsmile (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 03:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Thwaites Glacier

• ... that Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is expected to add 65 cm (25+1⁄2 in) to the global sea levels over the upcoming centuries? Source:
  • ALT1: ... that when icebergs split from the Thwaites Glacier, seismologists can detect shockwaves at ranges up to 1,600 km (990 mi)? Source:
  • ALT2: ... that some researchers have proposed to counteract the ongoing decay of Thwaites Glacier by placing down curtains over a vast underwater area? Source:
  • ALT3: ... that the ice shelf in front of Thwaites Glacier is 45 km (28 mi) wide and over 587 m (1,926 ft)) thick, yet 2021 research suggests it may break apart within 5 years? Source:
  • Reviewed:

Improved to Good Article status by InformationToKnowledge (talk). Self-nominated at 15:19, 11 August 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Thwaites Glacier; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Nice work on this article. ALT0/1/2 are good to go. For ALT3, I would clarify that the collapse of the ice shelf "within five years" is based on an estimate from 2021, so that date should be added to the hook. Epicgenius (talk) 13:25, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, and done! I also changed the wording of ALT0 a little.InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

• @InformationToKnowledge and Epicgenius: Added an image above to make this a picture hook. What do you think? Cielquiparle (talk) 14:02, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
  • The image looks good to me as well. Epicgenius (talk) 20:37, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

References

Adversely affected?

The lead claims faster melting is "adverse"? Based on what? Is Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) an "adverse event"??? Whether it is beneficial or detrimental depends on the answer to the question:"to What?" and is completely subjective - and clearly not neutral. (I note that water is expected to become an increasingly scarce resource in the decades ahead, so the net effects of higher sea level and lower salinity are moot, imho.)98.21.208.178 (talk) 10:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

There is no credible opinion that sea level rise provides any kind of a solution to fresh water scarcity. Quite the opposite in fact. See Effects of climate change on agriculture#Changes in the extent and quality of agricultural land. The other reasons why sea level rise is universally agreed to be an adverse event (a process, really) are listed in that very article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 12:30, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Papers

We present evidence for seawater intrusions occurring at tidal frequencies over many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, a major contributor to sea level rise. The results call into question the traditional approach of modeling a fixed, abrupt transition from grounded ice to ice floating in the ocean with no ice melt at the transition boundary. We delineate a tidally controlled grounding zone, 2 to 6 km in length, and additionally irregular seawater intrusions extending another 6 km inland at spring tide. The rushing of seawater beneath grounded ice over considerable distances makes the glacier more vulnerable to melting from a warmer ocean than anticipated, which in turn will increase projections of ice mass loss. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404766121 AaronNGray (talk) 02:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Added. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Replace the term "mélange"?

I am surprised to see the French word "mélange" mentioned twice in this article. Is this really necessary? Couldn't we just replace it with the English words "mixture" or "jumble"? Or is there a specific reason why "mélange" has to be used? One of the occurrences is in this sentence (which I find a bit too long as well): It shows the glacier, the ice shelf on its eastern side, and the remains of the ice tongue in the west, now reduced to a "mélange" of icebergs which is much less effective at supporting the glacier and preventing calving events.. EMsmile (talk) 07:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)