Antarctica might release iceberg as big as Delaware
If part of ice shelf lets go, land ice behind it might follow and lead to sea rise
NASA is keeping a close eye on a 70-mile-long rift in an Antarctic ice shelf that could eventually produce a massive iceberg and indirectly lead to rising sea levels.
The crack in the Larsen C ice shelf is more than 300 feet wide and about a third of a mile deep, according to the agency. Once the crack goes all the way across, it could produce an iceberg the size of Delaware.
Ice shelves are floating sheets of ice that connect to a landmass, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Most of the world’s ice shelves hug the coast of Antarctica. The Larsen C shelf is on the peninsula that juts out toward South America.
The iceberg that could break off wouldn’t contribute to sea level rise since it’s already floating, said Ted Scambos, a scientist with the data center. If a chunk of ice that big just dropped into the sea, it would raise sea levels about one-sixteenth of an inch, he said.
However, land ice that had been blocked by the berg would plop into the sea, and that ice would raise sea levels, said NASA scientist Thomas P. Wagner. “Ice shelves serve a critical role in buttressing ice that’s on land,” he said.
In the past 30 years, a series of unusual ice shelf collapses have been seen on the Antarctic Peninsula, the data center reported. An ice shelf near Larsen C fell apart in 2002 following a similar crack.
Scientists taking part in NASA’s annual Operation IceBridge mission to measure changes in the polar ice and sea discovered the latest crack last month, according to the agency.