An ice bridge holding a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place has shattered and may herald a wider collapse caused by global warming, a leading scientist said.
‘It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact,’ David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey said.
A satellite picture, by the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40km long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins in place had snapped at its narrowest point of about 500 metres off the Antarctic Peninsula.
The loss of the ice bridge, which was almost 100km wide in 1950, could mean a wider breakup of the Wilkins, which is about the size of Jamaica or the US state of Connecticut.
