On May 15th 2015, NASA released a new study that revealed that one of Antarctica's ice shelves, Larsen B, is melting and facing collapse by 2020. A team of scientists led by Ala Khazendar has found that the Larsen B ice shelf is flowing faster, becoming increasingly more fragmented, and there are large cracks developing. The Larsen B ice shelf suffered a partial collapse in 2002. At that time the shelf lost a region larger than Rhode Island, while leaving 618 square miles of it left.
Ice shelves are important because they are the gatekeepers that keep glaciers from flowing into the ocean from Antarctica. Khazendar said that these changes are a warning and that, "Although it is fascinating scientifically to have a front row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it's bad news for our planet." Increasing glacial ice can and will contribute to the rise in sea levels around the world.
Khazendar's team ran a multiyear airborne survey campaign that provided them with unprecedented documentation of Antarctica's glaciers, ice shelves, and ice sheets. Data was gathered on surface ice elevations and bedrock depths by using instrumented aircraft that participated in NASA's Operation Icebridge. Khazendar said that, " Change has been relentless."
The west coast of the Antarctica Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth, with an average annual temperature increase of 2.5 degree Celsius in the last five years. A NASA release on the study stated, "After the 2002 Larsen B collapse, the glacier behind the collapsed part of the shelf accelerated as much as eightfold - comparable to a car accelerating from 55 to 440 miles per hour.
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