The massive Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica could “fall apart overnight” and raise sea levels by 10 feet, declares an article Thursday in Rolling Stone magazine.

The essay by Jeff Goodell, titled “‘The Fuse Has Been Blown,’ and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All,” states that cracks and fissures in the Thwaites eastern ice shelf suggest the Florida-sized ice mass “could fracture like a shattered car window in as little as five years.”

The West Antarctic ice sheet “is one of the most important tipping points in the Earth’s climate system,” Goodell asserts. “If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea.”

“If there is going to be a climate catastrophe, it’s probably going to start at Thwaites,” Goodell writes, citing Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat.

What this “world-bending catastrophe” would mean in terms of death and damage, Goodell insists, is the disappearance of Miami and “virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.”

Chilean and U.S. scientists looking at a solar eclipse from the Union Glacier in Antarctica on December 4, 2021. (FELIPE TRUEBA/Imagen Chile/AFP via Getty Images)

Moreover, the disaster would not be gradual but sudden, he suggests, because a runaway collapse of the ice sheet “could raise global sea levels very high, very fast.”

While Goodell urges concerted climate action, he is not optimistic about the results.

“Even if we cut carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, warm water will continue to flow beneath the ice sheet for decades, destabilizing the ice and further pushing the glacier toward eventual collapse,” he declares.

Goodell is not alone in sounding the alarm over the threat of the “doomsday glacier.”

On Thursday, ABC News in Chicago asserted that the ice sheets around Thwaites Glacier are fracturing and could “shatter within the next three to five years.”

“A breakage of that magnitude would pose the biggest threat for sea-level rise in the 21st century and would put coastal communities and low-lying nations at risk,” ABC said, citing “researchers.”