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Antarctic Crack-Up
Earlier this year, a trillion-ton iceberg roughly the area of Delaware broke free from Antarctica. The break occurred along a growing crack in the Larsen C ice shelf, a floating sheet of ice that connects to a landmass.
It’s unclear whether warming temperatures caused by climate change played a role in creating the massive iceberg, says geophysicist Adam Booth of the University of Leeds in England. Ice shelves naturally calve, or split, from time to time. But distinguishing the effects of climate change from natural calving is tricky. Scientists are closely monitoring the rest of Larsen C, which could become more vulnerable to further breaks after losing so much ice.
MASSIVE CRACK: The crack that created the huge iceberg was 900 feet wide and more than 120 miles long.
The graph below shows several significant ice shelf breaks recorded in Antarctica. How did this year’s Larsen C break compare with that of the Wilkins ice shelf?