NASA Reveals Enormous 300-Ft-Wide Rift In Antarctic Ice Shelf, Expected To Result In Gigantic Iceberg
A huge, wide rift has opened up in an area of the Antarctic ice-shelf and it spans 300 feet. On Friday, NASA revealed a worrying image of the crack getting longer, deeper and wider. It is speculated that the rift would cause a large section of the shelf to break off.
Image Credit: NASA
'The crack completely cuts through the Ice Shelf but it does not go all the way across it – once it does, it will produce an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware,' NASA stated in a press release.
The Larsen-B ice shelf started seeing the big melt in 2002. It saw a massive 1,235 square miles (3,200 square km) section of ice break apart into thousands of icebergs in just 35 days.
Image Credit: NASA
So what happens next?
The rift will extend all the way and then will start breaking off. A large area of ice, say about a size of Scotland will destabilise and will be at a risk of melting. It won’t melt immediately though - it will float and be a lock for land-based ice. Later, after years, it will join the sea and melt completely and increase the sea level.
View is of a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf from our airborne survey of polar ice: https://t.co/VgjxopHHLI @NASA_ICE pic.twitter.com/gt5mpHqbxn
— NASA (@NASA) December 3, 2016
When this iceberg calving happens, it will then be the largest calving event in Antarctica since 2002. The melting is the result of rapid warming in recent years due to a combination of increasing air and sea temperatures.