Ice shelf about to break away from Antarctic coast
PARIS (AP) — A massive ice shelf anchored to the Antarctic coast by a narrow and quickly deteriorating ice bridge could break away soon, the European Space Agency warned Friday.
The Paris-based agency said satellite images show the bridge that connects the Wilkins Ice Shelf to Charcot and Latady Islands "looks set to collapse."
"The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts" appeared and a large block of ice broke away, it said.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf — which like the rest of Antarctic's ice sheet "was formed by thousands of years of accumulated and compacted snow" — had been stable for most of the last century before it began retreating in the 1990s, the statement said.
The shelf, which was originally of Jamaica or the U.S. state of Connecticut, is located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, which thrusts up from the continent toward the southern tip of South America.
Originally covering about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometers), the ice shelf lost 14 percent of its mass last year alone, the statement quotes a scientist Angelika Humbert of Germany's Munster University as saying.
In two 2008 incidents, large chunks of the ice bridge fell away, shaving it down to just 985 yards (900 meters) across at its narrowest, the statement said.
As a result, "In the past months, we have observed the ice bridge deforming and its narrowest location acting as a kind of hinge," Humbert is quoted as saying.
Scientist are examining whether global warming is behind the shelf's breakup, the statement said. Average temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3.8 degrees Farenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) over the past half century, the statement said — higher than the average global rise.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Illustrated map of the Wilkins Shelf in 2008 The European Space Agency (ESA) reported on Friday that the Wilkins Shelf, an enormous Antarctic ice shelf half the size of Scotland, could break away from the continent very soon.

According to reports, only a thin strip of ice connects it to the Charcot Island, and cracks are expanding rapidly. This is the largest shelf of ice so far to have disintegrated in the Antarctic.

In February 2008, the shelf lost 425 square kilometres (164 square miles) of ice, followed by a loss of another 62 square miles in May 2008.

"During the last year the ice shelf has lost about 1800 square kilometers (694 square miles), or about 14 percent of its size," said Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics at University of Münster in Germany. Scientists say that the shelf, if it detaches from the mainland, won't cause an increase in sea levels, as it is already floating.

Most scientists believe that the incident is further evidence of global warming. Average temperatures in the Antarctic peninsula have increased by about 2.5 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past fifty years.