In theory, adding thousands of gigatonnes of artificially created snow could stabilize them,[19] but it would be extraordinarily difficult and may not account for the ongoing acceleration of ocean warming in the area.

[11] Others suggest that building obstacles to warm water flows beneath glaciers would be able to delay the disappearance of the ice sheet by many centuries, but it would still require one of the largest civil engineering interventions in history.

[26][24] In 2017, geologists from Edinburgh University discovered 91 volcanoes located two kilometres below the icy surface, making it the largest volcanic region on Earth.

Until around 400,000 years ago, the state of WAIS was largely governed by the effects of solar variation on heat content of the Southern Ocean, and it waxed and waned in accordance with a 41,000-year-long cycle.

[48] The reason for concern about Thwaites is because it had been experiencing substantial mass loss since at least the early 1990s,[5] while its local seabed topography provides no obstacles to rapid retreat,[49] with its most vulnerable parts located 1.5 mi (2.4 km) below the sea level.

[41][51][52] The glacier would start to see major losses "within decades" after the ice shelf's failure, and its annual contribution to sea level rise would increase from the current 4% to 5%, although it would still take centuries to disappear entirely.

However, projections are complicated by additional processes that are difficult to model, such as meltwater from the ice sheet itself changing local circulation due to being warmer and fresher than the ocean water.

[54][55] Another complicated process is hydrofracturing, where meltwater collecting atop the ice sheet may pool into fractures and force them open, further damaging its integrity.

It suggests that when a glacier's ice shelf melts, it would not just retreat faster, but rapidly collapse under its own weight if the height of its cliffs was greater than 100 m (330 ft).

In 2007, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report omitted any mention of it due to increased uncertainty, and a number of scientists criticized that decision as excessively conservative.

[63][64] The 2013/2014 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was again unable to describe the risk, but it stated with medium confidence that MISI could add up to several tens of centimeters to 21st century sea level rise.

The report projected that in the absence of instability, WAIS would cause around 6 cm (2.4 in) of sea level rise under the low-emission scenario RCP2.6.

High emission scenario RCP8.5 would have slightly lower retreat of WAIS at 4 cm (1.6 in), due to calculations that the surface would be gaining mass.

[65] Afterwards, several major publications in the late 2010s (including the Fourth United States National Climate Assessment in 2017) suggested that if instability was triggered, then the overall sea level rise (combining the melting of West Antarctica with that of the Greenland ice sheet and mountain glaciers, as well as the thermal expansion of seawater) from the high-emission climate change scenario could double, potentially exceeding 2 m (5 ft) by 2100 in the worst case.

It had also been suggested that by the year 2300, Antarctica's role in sea level rise would only slightly increase from 2100 if the low-emission RCP2.6 scenario was followed, only contributing a median of 16 cm (5 in).

[83][75] Some of this was as the result of the natural cycle of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, but large flows of meltwater also had a clear effect,[84][85][9][76] The circulation may lose half of its strength by 2050 under the worst climate change scenario,[10] and decline even more afterwards.

[89][50] In the 1970s, radar measurements from research flights revealed that glacier beds in Pine Island Bay slope downwards at an angle, well below the sea level.

[92] Now, the potential for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to disappear after a certain temperature is exceeded is considered one of the tipping points in the climate system.

This includes paleoclimate evidence from the Eemian period, such as analysis of silt isotopes in the Bellingshausen Sea, or the genomic history of Antarctica's Turquet's octopus.

The former shows specific patterns in silt deposition and the latter genetic connections between currently separate subpopulations; both are impossible unless there was no ice outside of mountain caps in the West Antarctica around 125,000 years ago, during Marine Isotope Stage 5.

[93][94][12][13][95] Further, oceanographic research explains how this irreversible melting would occur, by indicating that water temperatures in the entire Amundsen Sea are already committed to increase at triple the historical rate throughout the 21st century.

Its most vulnerable parts like Thwaites Glacier, which holds about 65 cm (25+1⁄2 in) of sea level rise equivalent, are believed to require "centuries" to collapse entirely.

[17] 2021 research indicates that isostatic rebound, after the loss of the main portion of the ice sheet, would ultimately add another 1.02 m (3 ft 4 in) to global sea levels.

For instance, 2019 research estimated that moving some ocean water from the Amundsen Sea to the top of the Thwaites and Pine Island Glacier area and freezing it to create at least 7400 billion tonnes of snow would stabilize the ice sheet.

This would be enormously expensive, as an equivalent of 12,000 wind turbines would be required to provide power just to move the water to the ice sheet, even before desalinating it (to avoid enhancing surface melt with salt) and turning it to snow.

[104][105] A proposal from 2018 included building sills at the Thwaites' grounding line to either physically reinforce it, or to block some fraction of warm water flow.

[103][105] They also acknowledged that this intervention cannot prevent sea level rise from the increased ocean heat content, and would be ineffective in the long run without greenhouse gas emission reductions.

[103] 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.

[108][107][105] 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.