Anonymous Coward User ID: 4888817 United States 03/28/2012 03:48 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart at the seams A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea. The most extensive record yet of the evolution of the floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica shows that their margins, where they grip onto rocky bay walls or slower ice masses, are fracturing and retreating inland. As that grip continues to loosen, these already-thinning ice shelves will be even less able to hold back grounded ice upstream, according to glaciologists at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). Reporting in the Journal of Glaciology, the UTIG team found that the extent of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea Embayment changed substantially between the beginning of the Landsat satellite record in 1972 and late 2011. These changes were especially rapid during the past decade. The affected ice shelves include the floating extensions of the rapidly thinning Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers. [ link to www.physorg.com] |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 4888817 United States 03/28/2012 07:56 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart at the seams |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 11198416 Germany 04/05/2012 08:17 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart at the seams that may interest you OP... Satellite observes rapid ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic5 April 2012 :icemeltantarctic: This animation shows radar images from the Envisat satellite from 2002 to 2012 of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica. Over the last decade, the ice shelf has disintegrated by 1790 sq km. ReadMore and larger images: [ link to www.esa.int] |