Ice sheets breaking off Antarctica is n’t anything peculiarly new . But when one withstand previous methods , things start to get troubling .
That ’s what appear to have happened with the Pine Island Glacier . researcher from Ohio State University studied a 583 - square - km ( 225 square miles ) iceberg , which broke off from the glacier in 2015 .
Using artificial satellite images from ESA ’s Sentinel-1A and NASA ’s Landsat 8 artificial satellite , they witness that the crank sheet was constitute by a breach that formed at the base of the ice ledge 32 kilometers ( 20 miles ) inland in 2013 . This rift step by step move upwards until it fail through , causing the tabloid – 10 times the sizing of Manhattan – to break off in mid-2015 . The findings are publish in the journalGeophysical Research Letters .
shabu sheets like this normally violate when the ledge sticks out and snaps off from the fundamentals . “ It ’s sort of like a diving board cling out over a pool , ” extend author Ian Howat toldGizmodo .
So the fact this sheet was break by an inland crack is in particular strange , and rather worrying . It ’s another exercise of how rapidly some glaciers are retreating and , explained Howat in astatement , it add to the chance “ that we may see significant collapse of West Antarctica in our lifetime . "
This series of Sentinel-1A image shows the break - up
This is the first such break - up witness in the Antarctic , although standardized rifts have been realize in Greenland . It suggests that sea urine is evaporate trash far below the airfoil and err inland .
And that ’s bad news for , well , a portion of citizenry . More than half of the world ’s refreshed water is frozen in Antarctica , and if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses , it would result in a sea - level rising slope of about 3 meters ( 10 feet ) , which would engulf cities include New York and Miami .
" It ’s generally accepted that it ’s no longer a enquiry of whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will melt down , it ’s a question of when , " Howat said in the financial statement .
Good matter we ’re taking climate change seriously then , eh?Oh , wait .
