To peer into the future of one of Antarctica’s largest and fastest-shrinking glaciers, scientists on Wednesday began piercing a deep hole through its icy core.

A team of British and South Korean researchers is preparing to use the hole to study the warm ocean currents that are melting the Thwaites Glacier from below. Scientists fear that as Thwaites’s floating ice erodes and weakens, the rest of the glacier could start sliding quickly from the land to the ocean, adding to global sea-level rise.

But Thwaites’s floating end is too large for oceangoing robots to explore the deepest reaches of the waters underneath it. So the best way for researchers to collect data in those waters is by using hot water to bore a narrow hole through the half-mile-thick ice and installing instruments at the bottom.

“We’re just kind of curious to see more of what’s beneath our feet,” said Keith Makinson, an oceanographer and drilling engineer with the British Antarctic Survey.

The hot water first hit the ice on Wednesday evening, after a dinner of stir-fried spaghetti with peanuts and tuna. (After camping for more than a week on Thwaites to set up the drilling equipment, “the food choice is diminishing,” said Peter Davis, another oceanographer on the team.)