NASA MODIS Image Of The Day - Wilkins Ice Shelf Breakup 2/29/08

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Ice shelves are thick slabs of ice that are attached to coastlines and extend out over the ocean.

In the natural course of events, ice shelves often calve large icebergs.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, some ice shelves began exhibiting a new behavior: rapid disintegration into small pieces, likely as the result of warming temperatures. On February 28, 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula exhibited such a phenomenon. The MODIS sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites provided some of the earliest evidence of the Wilkins Ice Shelf disintegration. Aqua acquired the February 28 image (taken at 21:10 UTC), and Terra acquired the February 29 image (taken at 13:05 UTC). The February 29 image is the main image on this page. If you move your mouse over the image, you will see the February 28 one. In both images, intact ice shelf appears white, and disintegrating shelf appears blue. The disintegration of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was announced by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the British Antarctic Survey, and the Earth Dynamic System Research Center at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung. According to the institutions’ joint press release, an iceberg measuring 41 by 2.5 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles) broke off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf on February 28, leading to uncontrolled disintegration. Separated by just under 16 hours, these MODIS images show the rapid rate of disintegration; the growing region of pale blue on the ice shelf is crumbling, water-saturated ice.

EDIT/END

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=27503

Mods: press release given here in its entirety.

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1. Video

http://nsidc.org/news/images/20080325_wilkins_animation_low.mov