Image - NASA
With an area of about 5.000 square kilometers, the ice shelf known as the Larsen C ice shelf is about to break away. The fracture is already about 110km long, 100m wide and about 500m deep, and as The Week indicates, it appears to be held together by a thread of ice.
Scientists expect it to be fully shed in the coming months. But why?
The ice of Antarctica is attached to the shelf of the continent, and not on water as in the Arctic. For this reason, when the sea level rises globally. The Larsen Ice Shelf, located along the eastern coast of Antarctica, acts as a container for glaciers. Unfortunately, the Larsen A and B sections have already been detached, in 1995 and 2002 respectively.
According to scientific calculations, if all the ice were to break off the sea level would rise by about 10 centimeters. It may not seem like much, but all those who lived on the coasts would start to have a lot of problems.
As the global average temperature rises, the ice in Antarctica is melting, which only makes the situation worse. In this regard, according to a Nature magazine study, conducted by researchers Robert M. DeConto, from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts (United States), and David Pollard from the Pennsylvania State Institute (United States), by the year 2100 the water level could rise more than one meter.
Just if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, thaw would contribute very little to rising sea levels, said Professor DeConto.
Larsen Ice Barrier, Antarctica.
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