Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica!

The shelf’s disintegration in March of 2022 has reshaped a landscape where coastal glacial ice was once thought to be stable.

It is relatively common for ice shelves in Antarctica to spawn icebergs. It is even less common for an ice shelf to completely disintegrate which is basically its melting. But in March 202s, an ice shelf in the east Antarctic completely disintegrated and spawned an iceberg!

The change happened very fast! At the start of March 2022, the floating shelf was still stable and good! By the middle of March, the whole glacier fell apart. The image above shows the iceberg before and after it completely disintegrated.

“The whole shelf collapsed in only around 2 weeks!” said Christopher Shuman who is a glaciologist at the University of Maryland! The whole process of the iceberg’s disintegration took less than a month! This means that climate change has something to do with it!

If entire Antarctica melts, flooding will occur worldwide! Let’s stop pollution to stop tragedies from happening to make our beloved earth a better place to live! Remember, there is no Planet B and we all have to be responsible.

Author: Sri Nihal Tammana

Source: NASA Earth Observatory