Winter no reliefWilkins Ice Shelf continues disintegrationPosted June 20, 2008
Not even the Antarctic winter can save the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The European Space Agency The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad sheet of floating ice along the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February 2008, an area of about 400 square kilometers broke off from the ice shelf. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) According to Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn University, and Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics, Münster University, who have been investigating the dynamics of Wilkins Ice Shelf for months, this break-up has not yet finished. “The remaining plate has an arched fracture at its narrowest position, making it very likely that the connection will break completely in the coming days,” Braun and Humbert said. Braun and Humbert are monitoring the ice sheet daily via Envisat acquisitions as part of their contribution to the International Polar Year (IPY) The Wilkins disintegration won’t raise sea levels because it already floats in the ocean, and few glaciers flow into it. However, NSIDC scientists and others have previously noted that the collapse appears to be part of a pattern, and additional ice shelves in the region may be at risk. Several have retreated in the past 30 years, with six of them collapsing completely — Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones ice shelves. The Antarctic Peninsula has arguably experienced the most dramatic rise in temperature over the last 50 years. NSIDC said temperatures have climbed 0.5 degrees Celsius each decade. Other scientists with the U.S. Antarctic Program ESA is helping scientists during IPY to collect an increasing amount of satellite information, particularly to understand recent and current distributions and variations in snow and ice and changes in the global ice sheets. ESA is also co-leading a large IPY project — the Global Interagency IPY Polar Snapshot Year (GIIPSY) — with the Byrd Polar Research Center Long-term satellite monitoring over Antarctica is important because it provides authoritative evidence of trends and allows scientists to make predictions. Ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula are important indicators for on-going climate change because they are sandwiched by extraordinarily rising surface air temperatures and a warming ocean.
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