Shelf ice on Antarctica is about to end

ByAmanda Graham

Part of the collapse of Antarctica in 2002Larsen Ice Shelf BHowever, research has revealed that it will completely disappear in 2020. Due to shelf ice, the glacier remains on Antarctica, but due to the collapse of the shelf ice, the glacier continues to drain into the sea.

JPL | News | It's the Final Act for Larsen B Ice Shelf, NASA Finds
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4589

The evolving instability of the remnant Larsen B Ice Shelf and its tributary glaciers
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1500151X

The state of the collapsing Larsen shelf ice can be seen from the following movie.

Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf: The Final Act - YouTube


Larsen Ice Shelf is a shelf ice on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.


Larsen ice shelves are made up of three parts, A, B, and C, but in 2002, two thirds of the shelf ice B collapsed in only six weeks. In the image on January 31, 2002, the outline of the shelf ice is clearly visible ......


In the image on February 23, you can see that shelf ice has collapsed.


March 7, 2002. It is getting more and more broken.


April 13th. The shelf ice serves as a gatekeeper to prevent glaciers from flowing out of Antarctica, but as the shelf ice ceases to exist, it can be seen that glaciers are flowing out into the sea.


The Larsen shelf Ice was found fragmenting and flowing was the team led by Ala Khazendar of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA observes the movement of ice on the earth using aircraftOperation Ice BridgeAccording to the data obtained by Khazendar and colleagues based on the data obtained by Operation Ice Bridge, the fragmented glaciers increased the speed of flowing out to the sea and it gradually melted and became smaller.


Larsen Ice Shelf is expected to disappear completely in 2020.


Until now, the speed at which the shelf ice became thin and flowed out to the sea was thought to be only a little changed in the first two years, but in this survey it has been accelerated considerably in the last few decades I understood that. Depending on the location, it was said that the acceleration was comparable to that the car would be 708 km / h from 89 km / h.


The size of Larsen B which is currently left is 1,600 square kilometers, the thickest part is 500 meters thick. It is predicted that the height of the sea level will rise in the future as glaciers flowing in the ocean and melting.


"It is very attractive for scientists to see how giant shelf ice collapses, but the situation that shelf ice that existed more than 10,000 years is about to disappear, It's bad news, "Khazendar said.