It’s January 30th, just after 4:20 p.m. local time, and after more than 21 hours of continuous drilling, the team at Thwaites Glacier finally breaks through—nearly 930 meters (3,000 feet) of ice to the dark water below.
What follows is the handoff from heat to data. The 90°C (194°F) hot-water line is pulled back, and two winches lower the first instruments into the hole—probes designed to measure temperature, salinity, and ocean currents beneath the glacier. This is the moment scientists have been chasing: direct, long-term measurements from the place where warm water is believed to be eating away at Thwaites from below.
If all goes as planned, a solar-powered mooring—backed by batteries through the Antarctic winter—will stream data to researchers in Cambridge, England, for months, even years. The payoff could be unprecedented insight into how fast this glacier is changing—and what that means for sea level rise in coastal communities worldwide.
It’s a small hole in a very big place. But the answers it carries could rewrite predictioms about sea-level rise all over the world.
