PARIS (AFP) – A Jamaica-sized ice shelf is close to wrenching itself away from Antarctica, following dramatic weakening of an ice "bridge" linking it to the continent, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported Friday.
The icy umbilical cord tying the Wilkins Ice Shelf to two islands on the Antarctic peninsula "looks set to collapse," ESA said.
The evidence comes from radar pictures taken on Thursday by its Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite, the Paris-based agency said in a press release.
Scientists have been keeping a worried eye on this ice shelf for years.
For many, it is a barometer of global warming, which has hit the Antarctic peninsula harder than almost any region on Earth.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles) before it began to retreat in the 1990s.
By May 2009, an ice bridge, about 2.7 kms (1.7 miles) wide on average and just 900 metres (yards) at its narrowest point, was all that connected it to Charcot and Latady islands.
Over the past year, the ice shelf has lost about 1,800 square kilometres (700 square miles), or about 14 percent of its size, in further breakup events, ESA said.
New pictures show "the beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge" itself, it added.
This week, rifts formed along the central axis of the bridge and a large chunk of ice broke away. The stress patterns are now expanding rapidly, pointing to a likely imminent collapse of the link.
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