The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long, fringing ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula from Cape Longing to the area just southward of Hearst Island. Named for Captain Carl Anton Larsen, the master of the Norwegian whaling vessel Jason, who sailed along the ice front as far as 68°10' South during December 1893.
In finer detail, the Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves that occupy (or occupied) distinct embayments along the coast. From north to south, the three segments are called Larsen A (the smallest), Larsen B, and Larsen C (the largest) by researchers who work in the area. The Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated in January 1995. The Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in February 2002. The Larsen C ice shelf appeared to be stable in 2008, though scientists predict that, if localized warming continues at its current rate, the shelf could disintegrate at some point within the foreseeable future.
The Larsen disintegration events were unusual by past standards. Typically, ice shelves lose mass by iceberg calving and by melting at their upper and lower surfaces. The disintegration events are linked to the ongoing climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, about 0.5 °C per decade since the late 1940s, which is a consequence of localized warming of the Antarctic peninsula. This localized warming is caused by anthropogenic global warming, according to some scientists through strengthening of the Antarctic annular winds.
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Larsen A and Larsen B iceshelves marked in red.
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Glacier-ice shelf interactions.
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Clear view of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Larsen Ice Shelf, and the sea ice covered waters around the region.
Read more about Larsen Ice Shelf: Breakup
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or shelf:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The boy seemed to have fallen
From shelf to shelf of someone’s rage.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)