Giant 'Delaware-size' iceberg set to break off Antarctica

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Scientists are divided about the impact of climate change on this particular break in Antarctica’s ice shelf.

Some have contended there’s little proof that the break, which will reduce the size of the Larsen C more than scientists have observed previously, reflects the advance of climate change. Ice shelves do, after all, break off sometimes.

“We do not need to press the panic button for Larsen C. Large calving events such as this are normal processes of a healthy ice sheet, ones that have occurred for decades, centuries, millennia — on cycles that are much longer than a human or satellite lifetime,” Helen Amanda Fricker, an Antarctic scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote recently.

But others disagree.

“Of course this is due to climate warming in the peninsula,” Eric Rignot, a NASA and University of California, Irvine expert on Antarctica, said in an email.
Antarctica has seen an increase in breaks in its ice shelves in recent years.

The Larsen A ice shelf, far closer to the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula — and therefore, warmer latitudes — collapsed in 1995. In 2002, the same thing happened with Larsen B, its southern cousin, situated slightly closer to the South Pole.

Now, Larsen C, still farther toward the South Pole and subject to somewhat cooler temperatures, has seen a major break.

But there are big gaps in scientists’ knowledge about what might have disturbed the Larsen C ice shelf.