A crack on the Antarctic ice shelf grew dramatically in late 2020 into 2021.
Two years after the Brunt Ice Shelf seemed poised to produce a berg twice the size of New York City, the ice is still hanging on. But the calving of one, maybe two, large icebergs is inevitable. The question is: when? Ice scientists are watching to see if a rapidly accelerating crack will cause the shelf to rip apart before the sunlit summer season ends.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the Brunt Ice Shelf on January 12, 2021. The ice flows away from the Antarctic mainland and floats on the eastern Weddell Sea. The main shelf area has long been home to the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Research Station, from which scientists study Earth, atmospheric, and space weather processes.
The breaking, or “calving,” of icebergs from ice shelves is part of a natural, cyclical process of growth and decay at the limits of Earth’s ice sheets. As glacial ice flows from land and spreads out over the sea, shelf areas farthest from shore grow thinner. These areas are stretched thin, and can be melted from above or below, making them more prone to forming rifts and eventually breaking away. The Brunt Ice Shelf appears to be in a period of instability, with cracks spreading across its surface.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
