Antarctic Ice Shelf Beginning to Break Up

Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland.

But the 127-square-mile (330-square-kilometer) bridge lost two large chunks last year and then shattered completely on April 5.

“As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts, which had already featured along the northern ice front, widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted,” the European Space Agency said in a statement Wednesday.

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Massive Ice Shelf About to Break Away From Antarctic Coast

A massive ice shelf anchored to the Antarctic coast by a narrow and quickly deteriorating ice bridge could break away soon, the European Space Agency warned Friday.

The Paris-based agency said satellite images show the bridge that connects the Wilkins Ice Shelf to Charcot and Latady Islands “looks set to collapse.”

“The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts” appeared and a large block of ice broke away, it said.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf — which like the rest of Antarctic’s ice sheet “was formed by thousands of years of accumulated and compacted snow” — had been stable for most of the last century before it began retreating in the 1990s, the statement said.

The shelf, which was originally the size of Jamaica or Connecticut, is located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, which thrusts up from the continent toward the southern tip of South America.

Originally covering about 5,000 square miles, the ice shelf lost 14 percent of its mass last year alone, the statement quotes a scientist Angelika Humbert of Germany’s Munster University as saying.

In two 2008 incidents, large chunks of the ice bridge fell away, shaving it down to just 985 yards across at its narrowest, the statement said.

via Source