Recent images captured by European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel satellites have revealed two major cracks towards the west Antarctic ice sheet stretching as long as 20 kilometres.?
ESA
The cracks are visible on the Pine Island Glacier, which is a part of the West Antarctic ice sheet. This ice sheet has been rapidly releasing large amounts of ice in the ocean?since the last 25 years.
As per scientists, these cracks could result in the formation of a ginormous new iceberg. The ESA report reveals that the pace in which the ice has been moving on the Pine Island Glacier faster than 10 metres a day, which has resulted in major calving in 1992, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2018.?
To the uninitiated, calving means the breaking of icebergs or glaciers from the edge. It is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier or iceberg. While calving is a natural process, extensive calving events result in a considerable rise in global sea levels.?
The most recent cracks that appeared were after the 2018 calving that resulted in the creation of the enormous B-46 iceberg. It measured 66 square nautical miles, or 87 square miles.
ESA
The newer cracks came soon after. Sentinel-1 winter monitoring predicts that the new iceberg that is going to be calved would be of a similar size.
Global Warming is one of the reasons for this unusual rise in calving. Ice across the world is constantly melting, in some cases releasing pollutants long-since trapped in ice. But the melt is speeding up.?
Last month over 40 percent of Greenland experienced melting over a few days, with the total ice lost estimated to be more than 2 gigatons. Specifically, Greenland lost 2 billions tons of ice in a single day.