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Antarctic shelf, nearly the size of Los Angeles, completely collapses

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An ice shelf in Antarctica nearly the size of Los Angeles disintegrated in mid-March within days of a rapid increase in temperature, scientists say.

The Conger Ice Shelf, which spans approximately 460 square miles, collapsed around March 15. It was around the time temperatures soared to minus-12 degrees Celsius, more than 40 degrees warmer than normal, at the Concordia research station.

“I don’t think there has been a shelf collapse like this in East Antarctica since we’ve been able to receive satellite data,” Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN. “Conger is a very small ice shelf which has been decreasing in size for many years and this was just the final step which caused it to collapse.”

“The Conger ice shelf was there and then suddenly it was gone,” said Andrew Mackintosh, an ice sheet expert and head of the school of Earth, atmosphere and the environment at Monash University in Australia. 

Ice sheets are critical to holding back the flow of ice on the continent into the sea. “If they collapse, then ice flow from inland accelerates and leads to sea level rise,” he said. 

In the last century, East Antarctica barely warmed at all, but some regions have been affected and the continent lost an average of 149 billion tonnes of ice per year from 2002 to 2020, according to NASA. 

Helen Amanda Fricker, co-director of the Scripps Polar Center at the University of California San Diego, said researchers have to spend more time looking at the eastern part of the continent.

“East Antarctica is starting to change. There is mass loss starting to happen,” Fricker said. “We need to know how stable each one of the ice shelves are because once one disappears’ it means glaciers melt into the warming water and ‘some of that water will come to San Diego and elsewhere.”

One expert believes that only part of East Antarctica is a concern. “Most of East Antarctica is relatively secure, relatively invulnerable and there are sectors in it that are vulnerable,” said British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Rob Larter. 

“The overall effect of climate change around East Antarctica is it’s chipping away at the edges of the ice sheets in some places, but it’s actually adding more snow to the middle.”

ARTICLE: PAUL MURDOCH 

MANAGING EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE

PHOTO CREDITS: CNET.COM

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Paul Murdoch

Paul, 37, is from Scotland in the UK, but currently lives and works in Bangkok. Paul has worked in different industries such as telemarketing, retail, hospitality, farming, insurance, and teaching, where he works now. He teaches at an all-girls High School in Bangkok. “It’s a lot of work, but I love my job.” Paul has an active interest in politics. His reason for writing for FBA is to offer people the facts and allow them to make up their own minds. Whilst he believes opinion columns have their place, it is also important that people can have accurate news with no bias.

Paul, 37, is from Scotland in the UK, but currently lives and works in Bangkok. Paul has worked in different industries such as telemarketing, retail, hospitality, farming, insurance, and teaching, where he works now. He teaches at an all-girls High School in Bangkok. “It’s a lot of work, but I love my job.” Paul has an active interest in politics. His reason for writing for FBA is to offer people the facts and allow them to make up their own minds. Whilst he believes opinion columns have their place, it is also important that people can have accurate news with no bias.

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