[3] The glacier flows west-northwest along the south side of the Hudson Mountains into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea.

To the northeast of the bay and glacier lies the Hudson Mountains, a volcanic field that consists of both subareal and subglacial volcanoes.

Scientists have found that the flow of these ice streams has accelerated in recent years, and suggested that if they were to melt, global sea levels would rise by approximately 1.5 metres (59 in).

[18] Pine Island Glacier is vulnerable to increased ice loss because its base lies below sea level and slopes downward inland.

[3] Detailed simulations suggest that the Pine Island Glacier will contribute approximately 3 centimetres (1.2 in) of sea level rise over the next century.

[24] As the Pine Island Glacier retreats, it is speeding up and, since 2015, calving an unusual number of icebergs as large as 226 square kilometres (87 sq mi).

[26] Measurements along the centre of the ice stream by GPS demonstrated that this acceleration is still high nearly 200 km (120 mi) inland: speeds in 2007 were 26-42% faster than in 1996.

[28] The first expedition to visit the ice stream was a United States over-snow traverse, which spent around a week in the area of PIG during January 1961.

PIG is around 50 km (31 mi) wide at the point visited and at ground level cannot be visually distinguished from the surrounding ice.

[41] Due to the remoteness of Pine Island Glacier, most of the information available on the ice stream comes from airborne[2] or satellite-based measurements.

The team flew 30 km grid patterns over the PIG until January 18, mapping the sub-glacial terrain of over an area of approximately 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 sq mi).

[43] The IceBridge aircraft carried a number of instruments, including laser altimeters, radars, gravimeter, and a magnetometer.

[46] The extensive calving of Pine Island Glacier from 2015 onwards was tracked with the Terra MODIS instrument (through 2019) and via the Landsat 8 and Sentinel-1 satellites.

[50] In 2018 it was found that there is a substantial volcanic heat source beneath Pine Island Glacier approximately half as large as the active Grimsvötn volcano on Iceland.

[51] The same year a study was published concluding that the bedrock below WAIS was uplifted at a higher rate than previously thought, the authors suggested this could eventually help to stabilize the ice sheet.

[53] Consequently, some scientists, most notably Michael J. Wolovick and John C. Moore, have suggested stabilizing them via climate engineering aiming to block warm water flows from the ocean.

[12] Their first proposal focused on Thwaites, and estimated that even reinforcing it physically at weakest points, without building larger structures to block water flows, would be among "the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted", yet only 30% likely to work.

[12] In 2023, it was proposed that an installation of underwater curtains, made of a flexible material and anchored to the Amundsen Sea floor would be able to interrupt warm water flow.

[56][55][57] To achieve this, the curtains would have to be placed at a depth of around 600 metres (0.37 miles) (to avoid damage from icebergs which would be regularly drifting above) and be 80 km (50 mi) long.