Thwaites Glacier in the west of Antarctica, nicknamed by scientists "the most dangerous in the world", is in a state of destruction and a huge piece is about to fall off from it.
If this glacier completely collapses, then it alone is capable of raising the level of the world ocean by 65 cm.
The destruction of part of the glacier was captured by a NASA satellite, after which the article was published in the journal Science Advances. The picture shows a heavily sagging part of the glacier, 300 meters high and about 4 km long.
According to scientists, a cavity formed in it, into which warm sea water seeped and intensified the melting process. Previously, this cavity contained an estimated 14 billion tons of ice.
The Thwaites Glacier flows into Pan Island Bay, the Amundsen Seas and is considered the most vulnerable part of the large West Antarctic ice sheet, which covers an area of about two million square kilometers and covers a volume of 25.4 million cubic kilometers.
At the moment, along with the Thwaites glacier, two other large glaciers in West Antarctica are rapidly decreasing in size - Pan Island and Smith Glacier. This is due to the fact that the melting of the ice cover in recent years has been much faster and the falling snowfalls can no longer compensate for the loss.
When all these three glaciers melt (and this will happen, according to scientists, at least 200 and at most a thousand years later), then the level of the world ocean will rise by 3.3 meters.
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That said, there is growing evidence that the rate of melting of the Thwaites Glacier is increasing every year due to the rise in mean sea temperatures as a result of global warming.