Accelerating Antarctic crack will hasten calving of huge iceberg

An enormous chunk of the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula now looks doomed to calve into the Weddell Sea, possibly within weeks.

Its fate is being sealed by a sudden change of direction in a 200-kilometre ice crack. Until last week, it had been running parallel to the Weddell Sea, but it has now turned seaward, satellite images have revealed.

The rift grew 17 kilometres between 25 and 31 May, having been stationary since January, and is now just 13 kilometres from the sea.

“Now that so little ice remains joining the iceberg to the ice shelf, we expect propagation to be quicker, but we really cannot know for sure how long it will take,” says Adrian Luckman of Swansea University, UK, and head of Project MIDAS, which monitors the ice shelf. “It could be any time, maybe within weeks, or possibly months.”
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Wonder if this will create a wave?