New model doubles some projections of sea level rise from the Thwaites Glacier

20 October 2026

A computer model developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the University of California, Irvine and Dartmouth College projects that Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier could raise sea levels more by the end of the century than some earlier estimates, with its contribution in some simulations as much as twice current projections. The study was published on 12 October in Nature Communications. The model treats grounding zones, rather than only grounding lines, as the transition where ice lifts off the seafloor. It finds that seawater penetrates several miles beneath the grounded ice and lifts it with the tides, introducing warmer water that speeds melting and destabilises the glacier more than a sharp boundary would. The model matched historical satellite data from the 1990s onward about four times more closely than models that omit grounding zones. Kristy Hutchings of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was quoted on the work.