While We Dink Around, Antarctica Is Melting

As politicians dither over a global climate treaty, and disinformers pontificate, a tangible and astonishing sign of climate destablization has put their mutual affection for inaction into dismal perspective.

Two days ago, the strip of ice linking a vast ice shelf to two western Antarctic islands was intact.

Yesterday, it shattered at its narrowest point.

This 25 mile long ice bridge had bound the Wilkins Ice Shelf landward of Charcot and Latady islands for eons. Its disintegration will allow ocean currents to wash more of the the 11,000 sq. km. /4,250 sq. mile expanse of ice (about the size of Jamaica) between the two islands, and out into open sea.

There it will largely break up, into comparatively smaller icebergs. As these bergs are carried into warmer northern waters by the global ocean current, they'll melt. Since the Wilkins Ice Shelf is already afloat, the melting sons and daughters of Wilkins won't contribute to sea level rise.

But without the Wilkins to hold them back, the glaciers and land-based ice that were "behind" it, on the Antarctic continent, will flow towards and into the ocean more speedily. If and as that ice melts, it will add new volume to the world ocean, raising sea levels.

The European Space Agency animation below tracks the ice bridge's disintegration. (The ESA is updating it as the agency acquires new satellite images.) Keep your eye on the narrow strip in the middle of the image:

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Antarctic ice bridge collapse hailed as new sign of global warming
(The Telegraph) "'It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago, it was intact. We've waited a long time to see this,' said David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey. Charcot Island will be a real island for the first time in history.'"

Antarctic ice bridge snaps (CBC) "The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been moving since the 1990s, but experts say this is the first time one of the links apparently keeping it in place has crumbled. They suspect climate change is responsible for the collapse of the bridge...Last week, U.S. and British scientists reported that Antarctica's Wordie Ice Shelf, which has been retreating in the past 40 years, is now completely gone and more than 8,500 square kilometres have broken off from the Larsen Ice Shelf since 1986."

USGS Releases Study on Ice Shelves and Climate Change (USGS press release, via KTVA - Alaska) "Antarctica's glaciers are melting more rapidly than previously known because of climate change, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report prepared in close collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey. The USGS study documents for the first time that one ice shelf has completely disappeared and another has lost a chunk three times the size of Rhode Island."