The World Is About to Lose This 10,000-Year-Old Ice Shelf

“We expect it will not last for more than a few years to come.”


This story originally appeared at CityLab and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In the winter of 2002, a massive Antarctic ice shelf known as Larsen B suffered a catastrophic collapse. Over the course of weeks about 1,250 square miles of frozen material broke off and slid into the ocean. NASA reported it had “never witnessed such a large area…disintegrate so rapidly.”

Satellites caught the fast-warming continent’s stunning breakdown, which scientists believe was caused by a rash of abnormally hot summers. Here’s the ice shelf in January:

NASA

The next month:

NASA

And in April, when much of it had drifted into the sea:

NASA

At the time it was unclear if the rest of the shelf could survive such a major failure. Now scientists have the answer: No way. “We expect it will not last for more than a few years to come,” says Ala Khazendar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a video.

Khazendar is part of a team that recently forecasted the shelf’s demise in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Since two-thirds of it went bye-bye in 2002, the structure measures only 625 square miles and is extremely unstable. That’s worrisome when you consider the role ice shelves play in maintaining the planet’s health. They act like buttresses for glaciers, slowing their slide into the ocean; without shelves, more and more glacial ice will enter the water and speed the rise of sea levels.

And that’s what’s “undoubtedly” happening with Larsen B, says Khazendar. The glaciers behind the shelf are thinning and speeding up, one by as much as eight times faster since 2002. (NASA compares this acceleration to a car zooming from 55 to 440 mph.) By the end of the decade it’s likely to be history—just another one of several large ice shelves to incur recent, unusually premature deaths.

“Although it’s fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it’s bad news for our planet,” says Khazendar in a press release. “This ice shelf has existed for at least 10,000 years, and soon it will be gone.”

The edge of the Larsen B Ice Shelf. The surface is melted, and ice flows off the edge like a waterfall. Ted Scambos and Rob Bauer/NSIDC

 

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate