An Antarctic ice shelf the size of New York City, which was located in a region previously assumed to be stable, has completely fallen. The shelf collapsed as temperatures in the area reached record highs last week. According to Catherine Walker, an ice expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the ice sheet fell somewhere between March 14 and March 16. In spite of the fact that the shelf is just 460 square miles in size, its unexpected breakup represents the first time in known history that an ice shelf on the eastern side of Antarctica has collapsed, according to the news agency Associated Press.
That was just a couple of days before temperature at a study outpost on the Antarctic plateau soared to 70 degrees Fahrenheit over normal. It was brought there by an atmospheric river, which was a vast column of water vapor that stretched from the tropics to Antarctica. Meanwhile, a high-pressure system is known as a “heat dome” swept in and settled over East Antarctica, retaining heat and moisture. Global temperatures are increasing as a result of people adding more heat-trapping chemicals to the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, and indeed the poles are heating at a quicker rate than the rest of the world.
Even before the heatwave, Antarctica’s sea ice coverage has reached its lowest level in recorded history. According to the Associated Press, this ice shelf has been gradually diminishing ever since 1970s, and its melt accelerated in 2020, resulting in a halving of its size on a monthly basis. Previously, the shelf was between two glaciers, known as Conger and Glenzer, and warmer ocean waves, but this has changed. Because of the alarming collapse, it has been shown that even locations that experts believed were immune from the consequences of climate change are not so safe after all.
