Because of the growing size of the cracks on the ice shelf brunt in Antarctica there is a danger of spalling of the icebergthe size will be twice the size of new York.
It is unclear how «react» is the remaining ice. It also poses a threat to scientists conducting ongoing research on the shelf.
Huge cracks are visible when comparing the images obtained from satellites from the 30 January 1986 and 23 January 2019.
The crack that is visible in the center of the image was stable for about 35 years, but recently began to increase at an impressive rate — up to 4 kilometers per year.
The area of ice that may break off the shelf brunt, according to scientists, is not less than 1,700 square kilometres (660 square miles).
It’s not a very large iceberg in the Antarctic standards, perhaps not even included in the top 20. But it may be the huge breakaway ice shelf brunt since the beginning of observations in 1915.
Scientists are watching to see whether the loss of such amount of ice to further change shelf and its collapse.
The growing cracks are cause for concern about the safety of researchers year-round from Halley station, owned by British Antarctic survey.
Splits are a normal part of the life-cycle of glaciers, but predicting them is almost impossible.
In recent years, the increase in average temperatures around the world accelerated the pace of melting ice in Antarctica, the result of which broke several large icebergs.
For example, in July 2017 from ice Larsen shelf broke off an iceberg the size of Delaware.
