Melt water is fresh and therefore relatively light.As the glacier melts, the fresh water therefore tends to flow upwards, drawing up the heavier warmer sea water behind it.When the sea water is cold, this process is very slow, the ice pump usually just melts a few dozen centimetres a year - easily balanced by the new ice created by falling snow.But warm water transforms the process, according to the scientists.Evidence from other glaciers shows that if you increase the amount of warm water that is reaching the glacier the ice pump works much faster. "It can set glaciers on fire," says Prof Holland, "increasing melt rates by as much as a hundred-fold. "They already have in the Arctic," says Prof Vaughan with a sigh. This is because Antarctica is in the Southern Hemisphere, which faces the Sun during our winter time.The angle of the Sun is low in the sky.

Elsewhere, there are cliffs of ice, some of which rise up almost a mile from the sea bed.The front of the glacier is almost 100 miles wide (160km) and is collapsing into the sea at up to two miles (3km) a year.The scale is staggering and explains why Thwaites is already such an important component of world sea level rise, but I am shocked to discover there is another process that could accelerate its retreat even more.Most glaciers that flow into the sea have what is known as an "ice pump".Sea water is salty and dense which makes it heavy. The scientists had told me that we had been camped on what is basically a small bay of ice protected by a horseshoe of raised ground.As we fly out over the front of the glacier, I realise with a shock just how fragile a fingerhold it is.There is no mistaking the epic forces at work here, slowly tearing, ripping and shattering the ice.In some places the great sheet of ice has broken up completely, collapsing into a jumble of massive icebergs which float in drunken chaos. Temperatures decrease approximately 1°C for every 100 m increase in height.Cold air cannot hold as much water vapour as warm air, so precipitation is less likely.Oceans store heat so they often create milder temperatures and increased rainfall. Unlike the east it doesn't rest on high ground. The ice in Antarctica is on average 2.5 km thick.. These are external links and will open in a new windowSediment sweeps past the camera as Icefin, a bright yellow remotely operated robot submarine, moves tentatively forward under the ice.Icefin is under almost half a mile (600m) of ice, at the front of one the fastest-changing large glaciers in the world.Suddenly a shadow looms above, an overhanging cliff of dirt-encrusted ice.It doesn't look like much, but this is a unique image - the first ever pictures from a frontier that is changing our world.Icefin has reached the point at which the warm ocean water meets the wall of ice at the front of the mighty Thwaites glacier - the point where this vast body of ice begins to melt.Glaciologists have described Thwaites as the "most important" glacier in the world, the "riskiest" glacier, even the "doomsday" glacier.It already accounts for 4% of world sea level rise each year - a huge figure for a single glacier - and satellite data show that it is melting increasingly rapidly.There is enough water locked up in it to raise world sea level by more than half a metre.And Thwaites sits like a keystone right in the centre of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - a vast basin of ice that contains more than 3m of additional potential sea level rise.Yet, until this year, no-one has attempted a large-scale scientific survey on the glacier.The Icefin team, along with 40 or so other scientists, are part of the The project represents the biggest and most complex scientific field programme in Antarctic history. It is not unusual to have hurricane force winds as well as very low temperatures.This one is relatively mild for Antarctica but still involves three days of wind gusting up to 50mph.

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