When the ocean warms, the glacier’s ice shelf starts melting off because 90% of a floating glacier is in the ocean. These massive calving events are a result of two climate change-related factors - rising air temperature and ocean temperature, she says. “So it's much more likely to calve in the future.” “So it has nothing to buttress up against at this point,” she says. The glacier was once buttressed against a tributary ice flow, she says, but after a calving event in 2018, Pine Island “lost contact” with the tributary ice, meaning it now has “less support” and is susceptible to cracks. Scientists are worried about the future of Pine Island Glacier because its ice is retreating at an accelerated rate, exceeding 35 feet per day, she says. Small pieces have now broken off from the original iceberg. 9 - that’s roughly three times the size of San Francisco. “So many towns and cities are almost at sea level at this point.”īanwell says 120 square miles of ice broke off Pine Island on Feb. “Rising sea levels - even just by a few centimeters, even a few millimeters - is going to start flooding low lying communities worldwide,” she says. The glacier is also the biggest single contributor to global sea-level rise of any glacier on Earth, she says. Pine Island Glacier is important in particular because it has the ability to raise global sea levels by four feet in total, she says. But now, calving events occur “almost annually” on Pine Island, she says. In the past, Pine Island would calve every four to six years, glaciologist Alison Banwell says. The loss of large ice chunks, known as calving, is a routine process that happens to every glacier. Some parts of the content recently experienced record-high temperatures of nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit. ![]() ![]() The glacier, known as Pine Island, is considered one of the fastest retreating glaciers in Antarctica, where the climate is changing rapidly. ![]() This month, an iceberg nearly the size of Atlanta broke off in Antarctica. Facebook Email Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica spawns new iceberg on February 11, 2020.
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