OVER THE PAST several months, scientists working in Antarctica have been watching—with a mixture of professional fascination and personal horror—a fissure growing in the continent’s fourth-largest ice shelf. Since last November, the crack has lengthened by some 90 miles. It has 13 miles more before it rends completely, and a chunk of ice the size of Delaware goes bobbing into the Weddell Sea. The calving chunk could be a sign that the entire Larsen C ice shelf—nearly twice the size of Massachusetts—is breaking apart.
OVER THE PAST several months, scientists working in Antarctica have been watching—with a mixture of professional fascination and personal horror—a fissure growing in the continent’s fourth-largest ice shelf. Since last November, the crack has lengthened by some 90 miles. It has 13 miles more before it rends completely, and a chunk of ice the size of Delaware goes bobbing into the Weddell Sea. The calving chunk could be a sign that the entire Larsen C ice shelf—nearly twice the size of Massachusetts—is breaking apart.
Then again, it could mean nothing. On the other side of Antarctica is the Amery Ice Shelf, where for 15 years scientists have been monitoring a nearly-calved chunk they call the Loose Tooth. “There’s another one on Ross Ice Shelf called Nascent, as in it’s going to go any day now,” says Kelly Brunt, a geophysicist specializing in large-scale ice activity with NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory. “It’s had that name for a long time.” Point is, scientists can’t predict how ice shelves behave. Same for how the chunk will melt once it does break off. Ice and water are complicated things, and the extreme nature of working in the Antarctic makes collecting data on how they work especially difficult.
Pretend you have an ice cube sitting in a glass of water. (Alternately, just put an ice cube in a glass of water.) Now, try to predict how long it will take this cube to disintegrate. Now do it again. Again. Even in a temperature-controlled room, with identically-sized cubes, it’s really difficult to calculate a cube’s melt rate, thanks to air circulation in the room or bubbles in the ice.
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Picture: Rift in Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf
Photo credit: NASA / John Sonntag
