The largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Penninsula is disintegrating further by calving a huge iceburg. The dimensions of the iceburg are about 25 mi. by 1.5 mi. (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers).

Source

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A thin strip of ice, just 6 kilometres wide, is all that is holding back the collapse of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica, according to glaciologists.

The Wilkins ice shelf – previously some 16,000 square kilometres in area – has been disintegrating fast. On 28 February, an iceberg 41 km long and 2.5 km wide broke off the ice shelf. This triggered the runaway disintegration of a further 570 square kilometres of ice.

"I would be very surprised if it survives more than a couple more melt seasons," says Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado, US.

Other researchers, including David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, believe it could be gone within weeks. "The ice shelf is hanging by a thread – we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be," he says.

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You can read more about it here.

Video of the ice shelf.

EDIT: I have replaced my original overlay with a series of four overlays provided by NASA Earth Observatory. The series shows how dramatic the breakup has been. Thanks for the link blt and for the suggestion mspelto

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Glaciologist Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado alerted colleagues Professor David Vaughan and Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that the ice shelf looked at risk. After checking daily satellite pictures, BAS sent a Twin Otter aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to check out the extent of the breakout.

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This is what they saw

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"I've never seen anything like this before – it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble – it's like an explosion."

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Hi Res- Wilikins Breaking Up
Hi Res- Wilkins from Twin Otter

The scene was also photographed by Taiwan’s Formosat-2 satellite.

Hi Res - Wilkins from Formosat 2

And for a bonus, while I was looking for these, pics I noticed that the NASA Earth Observatory is way ahead of us. Check out the attached KMZ file from NASA. KMZ file of the ice shelf disintegrating suitable for use with Google Earth showing the collapse using 4 dated A 250-meter-resolution overlays.

Edited by blt (04/01/08 10:45 PM)

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