The speed and continued breakup of Wilkins Ice shelf even during the winter is astounding. Thanks for the posts Hill. I wonder, if arctic and antarctic ice melting/disintegrating are accelerating seems like this would result in more open water with less reflection of solar radiation in the polar regions. By themselves, events such as the Wilkens and Larson iceshelf losses of solar radiation reflectance are fairly small in scale. However, do they have a small but postive feedback, growing effect over time? If there is more solar radiation absorbed and reemitted by open water, what does that mean for polar and eventually global temperatures? Will cloud cover increase over the polar regions because of higher atmospheric moisture content? Will the break-up of the iceshelf permit acceleration of antarctic icestreams and thus increases of fresh water in the ocean? What does that mean with respect to ocean salinity and water density in those regions? Do or can these events have consequences with respect to global ocean currents? What is happening under the West Antarctic Ice sheet? Is there erosion of the ice by underlying water? So many questions with no clear cut answers. My fear is that we have embarked on a human caused "experiment" in climate change with no desirable outcome.