Watching the giant crack in Antarctica’s ice shelf. It will be one of the largest icebergs ever
The growing crack in Antarctica’s Larsen-C ice shelf is being monitored by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission. Scientists predict that when the ice shelf breaks off it will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded.
Two radar images from 7 and 14 April 2017 were combined to create an interferogram shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) showing the growing crack in Antarctica’s Larsen-C ice shelf. At this point it is difficult to predict how long it will take for the ice shelf to break off, or ‘calve.’
“We can measure the iceberg crack propagation much more accurately when using the precise surface deformation information from an interferogram like this, rather than the amplitude – or black and white – image alone where the crack may not always be visible,” Polar scientist Anna Hogg said.
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The crack is now over 175 km long, almost triple in size since it was measured in August 2015.
The sensitivity of ice shelves to climate change has already been observed on the neighbouring Larsen-A and Larsen-B ice shelves, both of which collapsed in 1995 and 2002, respectively.
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