Thwaites Glacier

English

Etymology

From the surname Thwaites; coined in 1967 as an homage to glaciologist Fredrik Thwaites (1883–1961).

Proper noun

Thwaites Glacier

1. A retreating glacier in Antarctica.

   Synonyms: Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites

   • 2014 May 12, Suzanne Goldenberg, “Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Scientists have known for years that the Thwaites glacier is the soft underbelly of the Antarctic ice sheet, and first found that it was unstable decades ago.

   • 2015, Stuart A. Kallen, Running Dry‎^[2], Twenty-First Century Books, →ISBN, page 43:

     In 2014 scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tracked the movements of the glaciers using satellite measurements and computer models. They determined that the largest mass of ice, Thwaites Glacier, might disappear completely in two hundred years.