It took decades for global warming to slowly melt the surface of the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, forming nearly 3,000 lakes. But at the end of the Antarctic summer of 2002, all the lakes drained away in the space of a week. And then the 2,700-square-kilometre ice shelf, which was some 220 metres thick and might have existed for some 12,000 years, rapidly disintegrated into small icebergs, leaving glaciologists scratching their heads. It was “like the smashing of glasses at the throw of a stone”, University of Chicago geophysicist Douglas MacAyeal said last week at an International Glaciological Society meeting in Beijing. nature/news/chain-reaction-shattered-huge-antarctica-ice-shelf-1.13540
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 03:50:39 +0000
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