As meltwater rushes through the cracks in the Antarctic ice shelves, it can destroy the ice shelves in minutes or hours. This is amplified by the warming atmosphere, and as the warming continues, this phenomenon may happen more often than not.
Now that a couple of weeks have passed since the Larsen C ice shelf calved one of the largest icebergs of all time (observed by humans over the last few hundred years, that is), researchers have had some time to investigate what exactly has happened since then. There are interesting things to report.
The biggest iceberg in recorded history has broken off of Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf, sending a trillion tons of ice into shipping lanes. If only somebody could tow this Larsen C iceberg to California, it would go a long way toward solving the Southwest’s water shortages…
There are now only around 3 miles of of ice tethering an enormous trillion-ton piece of ice to the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica — with the rapidly approaching iceberg calving event slated to be one of the largest observed in modern times once it occurs.
The Larsen C ice shelf crack that we’ve reported on numerous times in recent months appears to be nearing the point of calving. This will become the second-largest iceberg ever recorded, according to the researchers at Project MIDAS.
The rift in Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf grew by around 17 kilometers over just the last week, leaving only a 13 kilometer tether keeping the enormous soon-to-be-iceberg from being set loose, according to researchers with the UK’s Project Midas.
The very large rift in the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica is continuing to grow — with a new second branch of the rift (15 kilometers long) now growing in the direction of the ice front, and thus a near-future calving event.
As we’ve covered news of the growing crack in Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf a number of times in recent months, it seems worth providing an update here. While the enormous (~more than 5,000 km²) soon-to-be iceberg has yet to actually calve, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey recently captured a video of the ice shelf that’s interesting to watch.
The large rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf that we reported on a few weeks ago has continued to grow at a rapid rate since then, with a further 10 kilometers of length added since January 1st according to the researchers at the MIDAS Project.
An enormous iceberg — comprising more than 5,000 square kilometers of mass — is now on the verge of breaking off from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, following the rapid expansion of a rift there last month.
