The Sudden Breakup of an Antarctic Iceberg has Researchers Worried about its Parent Glacier
2017-12-06
In September 2017, a large iceberg roughly four times the size of Manhattan calved off of the Pine Island glacier in Antarctica (not to be confused with last July’s massive iceberg that originated from the Larcen C ice shelf further east). While the event itself isn’t that unusual — the Pine Island Glacier accounts for 25 percent of all of Antarctica’s annual ice loss — this iceberg began to break up shortly after separating from its host glacier, instead of doing so after drifting far out into the Southern Ocean, as ‘bergs from Pine Island typically do.read more