Two years ago, the first direct measurements of water underneath West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier were taken by an unmanned submarine sent under the massive ice shelf. The goal was to figure out how much warm water is reaching the underside of the Florida-sized glacier, to better model how fast it might melt. On Friday, the data was published in the journal Science Advances. Researchers found that more warm water is being funneled under the glacier along an underwater trough than previously expected, and there’s a whole new pathway for warm water they didn’t expect to find. The World’s environment correspondent Carolyn Beeler reports.
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