The massive Larsen C ice-shelf in Antarctica had been developing a 100-mile long crack across it over the last few years:
The section of the ice shelf has now fully broken off, creating one of the largest icebergs in human history. The iceberg is approximately the size of the US state of Delaware:
This is the latest in a series of events since the mid-1990s where the Larsen ice-shelves have lost major mass. The ice-shelves are believed to have formed around 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice-age. Losing this much mass at once is not believed to be normal behavior for these ice-shelves.
Since ice-shelves are already floating on water, they do not cause sea level changes when they break off or melt. Sea level rise will be caused when ice on land melts (i.e. the ice on the Antarctic continent proper and in Greenland and Siberia). This massive iceberg will gradually melt, but may cause problems in shipping-lanes around South America. A few people have suggested there may be some merit in redrawing maps of Antarctica since the shape of the coastline is now different.
The section of the ice shelf has now fully broken off, creating one of the largest icebergs in human history. The iceberg is approximately the size of the US state of Delaware:
This is the latest in a series of events since the mid-1990s where the Larsen ice-shelves have lost major mass. The ice-shelves are believed to have formed around 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice-age. Losing this much mass at once is not believed to be normal behavior for these ice-shelves.
Since ice-shelves are already floating on water, they do not cause sea level changes when they break off or melt. Sea level rise will be caused when ice on land melts (i.e. the ice on the Antarctic continent proper and in Greenland and Siberia). This massive iceberg will gradually melt, but may cause problems in shipping-lanes around South America. A few people have suggested there may be some merit in redrawing maps of Antarctica since the shape of the coastline is now different.
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