NASA is concerned that an iceberg twice the size of New York City is about to break off from Antarctica.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been hard at work in recent decades developing models and recording observations that show what’s happening to Earth, and now scientists are warning that a huge ice chunk is about to free itself from Antarctica.
The space agency says that the crack (or rift) along part of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica first appeared in October 2016.
The rift – known as a Halloween crack – according to NASA is on course to intersect with another fissure that had previously been believed to be stable, but is now accelerating north at a rate of around 2.5 miles a year.
Once these two rifts meet, which could happen within weeks, an iceberg of at least 660 square miles – twice the size of New York City – is set to be loosened. It would be the largest iceberg to break off Brunt Ice Shelf since the area’s monitoring started in 1915.
“The likely future loss of the ice on the other side of the Halloween Crack suggests that more instability is possible,” Chris Shuman, a glaciologist with NASA and the University of Maryland Baltimore County told The Guardian.
Yet another reminder that we’re losing ice at a faster rate than it can regenerate.