We demonstrate how the wear response of a polymer surface can be efficiently characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) using a spiral scan with a thermal tip. If the spiral is scanned at constant angular speed in the vicinity of the glass transition of the polymer, the corrugation of the modified surface is found to decay exponentially with the linear velocity v. This is attested by profiles on poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA, and polystyrene, PS, surfaces obtained at AFM tip-surface temperatures up to 115 degrees C. We show that quantitative information for modeling polymer wear on the nanoscale can be obtained from this kind of measurements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.