Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming
An iceberg about twice the size of the District of Columbia broke off Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica sometime between Saturday and Sunday, satellite data shows, confirming yet another in a series of increasingly frequent calving events in this rapidly warming region.
The Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica, and along with the Thwaites Glacier nearby, it’s a subject of close scientific monitoring to determine whether these glaciers are in a phase of runaway melting, potentially freeing up vast inland areas of ice to flow to the sea and raising sea levels.
According to NASA, the region surrounding the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers contains enough “highly vulnerable ice” to raise global sea levels by about four feet. [Continue reading…]