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Friday 17 May 2019

Larsen Ice Shelf


What a fabulous NASA image this is!  I shows the Larsen Ice Shelf (bottom left) and its junction with piedmont land ice beyond the mountain front.  The plateau edge is dissected, with groups of isolated peaks beyond.  Then on the plateau itself, in the interior of the Antarctic Peninsula, there are connected plateau ice caps.  These are linked through to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet at the base of the peninsula.

This image was taken in 2004.  Since 2000, there have been major concerns about the break-up of this particular ice shelf, with some huge calving episodes making global headlines -- all a consequence of global warming. The most dramatic event was the collapse of Larsen B, in the space of around a month in the years 2002.

PS
See this animation to appreciate how the Larsen Ice Shelf has been breaking up:

https://giphy.com/gifs/esa-rG7lb1rCQFwNG

What happened in 2002:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/LarsenB

This is what happens when ice shelves collapse.  These are two images from the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf (on the other side of the peninsula) in 2008.  The process starts with major fissures opening up, and then the breakup of vast slabs into smaller slabs, which in some cases tip over and in other cases just disintegrate into a chaos of small broken fragments covering the sea surface -- until dispersed by tides and currents:


1 comment:

chris johnson said...

Very interesting. Thanks