A thin strip of ice, just 6 kilometres wide, is all that is holding back the collapse of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica, according to glaciologists.
The Wilkins ice shelf – previously some 16,000 square kilometres in area – has been disintegrating fast. On 28 February, an iceberg 41 km long and 2.5 km wide broke off the ice shelf. This triggered the runaway disintegration of a further 570 square kilometres of ice.
NewScientistEnvironment
I happened to be watching "An Inconvenient Truth" and the part about Ice Shelves breaking off as I came across this news. Larson B? Weird?
Although researchers agree the disintegration of the Wilkins ice shelf will not contribute to rising sea levels, they say it may help them understand what triggers such events in order to predict when they are likely to happen again.
But doesn't it feel like another "brick in the wall"? Another ice shelf and more melting unlike anything scientists have seen before. According to Professor David Vaughan of BAS, Wilkins is the largest ice shelf yet to be under threat of melting and "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."
A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.
Satellite images suggest that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble away.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s.
BBC News
My knowledge of this is limited but I do believe that it's important to remember how much our world is changing, right now with or without our action.