MEXICO CITY: Warm water is reportedly seeping into the vast Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, also known as the Doomsday Glacier, according to researchers. This worsens melting brought on by rising temperatures, according to two papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Thwaites, which is roughly the size of Florida, has the potential to contribute more than half a meter (1.6 feet) of global sea level rise and could destabilize nearby glaciers, which could result in an additional three meters (9.8 feet) of rise.

A group of 13 American and British scientists spent about six weeks on the glacier in late 2019 and early 2020 as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, the largest field campaign ever attempted in Antarctica.

They kept an eye on the glacier's grounding line, which is where ice first slides off the glacier and meets the ocean, using sensors, mooring data, and the underwater robot vehicle Icefin.

In one of the papers, scientists led by Britney Schmidt of Cornell University discovered that warmer water was seeping into terraces and other openings known as crevasses, causing sideways melting of at least 30 meters (98 feet) per year.

According to Schmidt, "warm water is getting into the glacier's weakest areas and making it worse."

She said of the findings, which demonstrated how isolated Antarctica is being affected by climate change, "That is the kind of thing we should all be very concerned about."

The results of the other paper, on which Schmidt also worked, revealed less melting than the most aggressive thinning models had previously predicted, at a rate of about five meters (16 feet) per year near the glacier's grounding line.

But she claimed that the melting remained a serious concern.

Even if we see less melting, Schmidt insisted, "that doesn't change the fact that it's retreating."

Prior to now, scientists relied on satellite images to depict the behavior of the ice, making it challenging to obtain fine details. The papers provide a view of "the action beginning" at a major glacier's grounding line for the first time, according to Schmidt.

The findings will help in the development of climate change models, said Paul Cutler, program director of Antarctic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He reviewed the papers but was not involved in the research.

"These things can now be taken into account in the models that will predict future behavior, and that was exactly the goal of this work," he said.