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Thwaites Ice Shelf (TWIS), the floating extension of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, is changing rapidly and may completely disintegrate in the near future. Any buttressing that the ice shelf provides to the upstream grounded Thwaites glacier will then be lost. Previously, it has been argued that this could lead to onset of dynamical instability and the rapid demise of the entire glacier. Here we provide the first systematic quantitative assessment of how strongly the upstream ice is buttressed by TWIS and how its collapse affects future projections. By modeling the stresses acting along the current grounding line, we show that they deviate insignificantly from the stresses after ice shelf collapse. Using three ice‐flow models, we furthermore model the transient evolution of Thwaites Glacier and find that a complete disintegration of the ice shelf will not substantially impact future mass loss over the next 50 years.

Coupled ice sheet‐ocean models are beginning to be used to study the response of ice sheets to ocean warming. Initializing an ice‐ocean model is challenging and can introduce nonphysical transients, and the extent to which such transients can affect model projections is unclear. We use a synchronously‐coupled ice‐ocean model to investigate evolution of Pope, Smith and Kohler Glaciers, West Antarctica, over the next half‐century. Two methods of initialization are used: In one, the ice‐sheet model is constrained with observed velocities in its initial state; in another, the model is constrained with both velocities and grounded thinning rates over a 4‐year period. Each method is applied to two basal sliding laws. For each resulting initialization, two climate scenarios are considered: one where ocean conditions during the initialization period persist indefinitely, and one where the ocean is in a permanent “warm” state. At first, model runs initialized with thinning data exhibit volume loss rates much closer to observed values than those initialized with velocity only, but after 1–2 decades, the forcing primarily determines rates of volume loss and grounding line retreat. Such behavior is seen for both basal sliding laws, although volume loss rates differ quantitatively. Under the “warm” scenario, a grounding line retreat of ∼30 km is simulated for Smith and Kohler, although variation in total retreat due to initialization is nearly as large as that due to forcing. Furthermore it is questionable whether retreat will continue due to narrowing of submarine troughs and limiting of heat transport by bathymetric obstacles.