Ice Shelf Bigger Than Manhattan Is Breaking From Antarctica


Climate change has been a major theme of this presidential election cycle. Even the Republican candidates have had to answer questions about it (shockingly) ahead of the important primaries on March 15.

Climate change is particularly key in Florida, where Miami already faces days of slight flooding in the summer due to the expanding sea. Now, a huge ice shelf is poised to break away from Antarctica for the first time since 2002, and it could spell an omen for future disaster to come.

photo credit: Nansen Ice Shelf and the crack, taken by Landsat 8 on December 16, 2015. USGS
photo credit: Nansen Ice Shelf and the crack, taken by Landsat 8 on December 16, 2015. USGS

The disintegrating ice shelf could break away from the continent as early as this summer and will likely be around twice the size of Manhattan Island. As bad as it seems, this ice shelf, dubbed “Nansen,” barely qualifies as an ice shelf by ice shelf standards. They classify some ice shelves as “major,” and this isn’t one of them. Nansen only makes up about 0.1% of the total land area of ice shelves.




climate change cause cracking ice shelf

That said, the implications  for the environment are quite serious. The sea level is already at risk of putting cities underwater in the not-so-distant future, and it should be addressed directly. The breaking ice shelf will eventually melt after separation and increase the sea level slightly by itself, but the real threat is glaciers.

Ice shelves barricade glaciers that will fall into the sea once the shelf is removed. Some glaciers begin to move into the sea at rates of up to ten times faster than normal, and that will definitely cause rising sea levels.

With sea levels already at threatening heights and rising an additional 3.5 mm per year since the 1990s without any other intervention (a fact which further proves industry is causing it), we need to do something about this right away. People cannot continue to deny science for convenience and profit. America is supposed to lead the world in tackling these kinds of major issues head on. We shouldn’t be waiting for disaster before we act.

Here’s a video.

Featured image was taken in December 2015 by Christine Dow of NASA.

Nick Bartholomew is a writer, editor, and an LLA (Liberal Living Abroad) based in Osaka, Japan. While he spends his time enjoying Japanese culture, he still does his civic duty by following US politics closely. He also blogs about gaming and technology on his website Ctrl-Alt Awesome.