Wilkins Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World
Satellite imagery from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica. [read that again 5,282 square mile!!]
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula, about 1,000 miles south of South America. In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”
Satellite images indicate that the Wilkins began its collapse on February 28; data revealed that a large iceberg, 41 by 2.5 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles), fell away from the ice shelf’s southwestern front, triggering a runaway disintegration of 405 square kilometers (160 square miles) of the shelf interior (Figure 1). The edge of the shelf crumbled into the sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice that has become characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups such as the Larsen B in 2002. A narrow beam of intact ice, just 6 kilometers wide (3.7 miles) was protecting the remaining shelf from further breakup as of March 23 (Figure 2).
This is a joint press release from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), based in the United Kingdom; and the Earth Dynamic System Research Center at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) inTaiwan.
Media Relations Contacts:
Stephanie Renfrow, NSIDC: srenfrow@nsidc.org or +1 303 492-1497 (se habla Español)
Athena Dinar, BAS: amdi@bas.ac.uk or +44 (0)1223 221414
Cheng-Chien Liu, NCKU: ccliu88@mail.ncku.edu.tw or +886-6-2757575 X65422
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20080325_Wilkins.html
