Recent efforts using computational modeling to understand how melting ice in Antarctica will impact the planet's oceans have focused on ice-sheet geometry, fracture, and surface melting—processes that could potentially trigger or accelerate ice-sheet mass loss. Now, researchers from Stanford University have identified an additional process that could have a similarly significant effect on the ice sheet's future: thawing of the bed, known as basal thaw, at the interface of the land and the miles-thick ice sheet above it.