What is the primary culprit that causes the "Doomsday Glacier" in Antarctica?

Abstract

Antarctica, situated in the southernmost part of the earth is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. It has an extremely important role in tuning global climate, both because of its geographic location, and its giant ice mass, that comprises ~90% of the world's ice. In the past decades, the Thwaites Glacier in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica is undergoing the fastest recession in the region. The ice loss in Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for roughly four percent of the global sea-level rise, which has been attributed to climate change and ocean warming. Due to the continuous collapsing and melting of Thwaites Glacier and the severe threat to humans, scientists gave it a terrifying name "Doomsday Glacier". With increasingly geological and geophysical studies conducted in West Antarctica, geothermal heat flux has been discovered to play a vital role in icesheet retreating. The rapidly retreating Thwaites and Pope glaciers are underlain by areas of largely elevated geothermal heat flow, which relates to the tectonic and magmatic history of the West Antarctic Rift System in this region, suggesting that this area is coupled to the dynamics of the underlying lithosphere. The collapsing and melting of the West Antarctic glaciers are without doubt a realistic and complex issue. From the current geological surveys, the heat flux of the crust of West Antarctica appears to be accelerating, coupled with frequent earthquakes and volcanoes. Geothermal features such as hot water lakes, thermal rivers, and giant ice caves beneath the glaciers have been continuously discovered. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that geothermal effects play a significant role in modifying the vast ice masses, causing glacier sliding, cracking, collapsing, and ultimately melting, and create conditions for a warming climate to melt West Antarctic glaciers. Many studies also suggest that warm ocean water is intruding beneath the glaciers across the grounding line, leading to melting of glacier bottom, which has been generally considered to be associated with human-emitted greenhouse gases, but it is thought here not to be a primary factor for glacier melting, but most likely a secondary factor. It is believed that primary and secondary factors, Milankovitch orbits, black body radiation, solar activities, human activities, and other factors are all interconnected to form a feedback loop between the glacier base and the ocean, or even a positive feedback loop, which further accelerates the collapsing and melting of the west Antarctic glaciers