Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf

On May 14, 2015, NASA announced that Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf (arrow) will most likely disintegrate before 2020. At least 10,000 years old, the ice shelf is flowing faster, becoming more fragmented, and developing large cracks. 

Ice shelves are sheets of ice that hug the coastline of a landmass. They form when glacial ice flows off the land and onto the cold water. Even though they are fed by the glacial ice, the ice sheets will actually push back against the flow, controlling how quickly the ice spills into the ocean. If an ice shelf were to collapse, the ice would flow into the ocean more quickly, contributing to sea level rise.

This study used data collected by IceBridge, NASA’s largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice, and by space-borne synthetic aperture radars. The image is from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA).