After more than a decade fastened to the coastline, a large expanse of sea ice broke away from the Antarctic Peninsula in January 2022.
After more than a decade fastened to the coastline, a large expanse of sea ice has broken away from the Antarctic Peninsula. The ice, which had persisted in the Larsen B embayment since 2011, crumbled away over the span of a few days in January 2022, taking with it a Philadelphia-sized piece of the Scar Inlet Ice Shelf.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aquasatellites acquired these natural-color images of the embayment and ice shelf. The right image shows the embayment on January 26, 2022, shortly after the sea ice broke up. For comparison, the left image shows the same area on January 16, 2022.
Scientists are still investigating the reason for the breakup, but the early clearing of seasonal sea ice along the Antarctic Peninsula suggests that the austral summer has been warm and wet. Scientist Rajashree Tri Datta of University of Colorado, Boulder, noted that foehn winds, influenced by a large atmospheric river, helped destabilize the ice pack. The phenomenon is apparent in this animation composed with images from NOAA’s GEOS-16 satellite.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
