Larsen B ice shelf, gone after 10 thousand years!

(Above: The shattred and fragmented Larsen B ice shelf shortly after its collapse)


THE Larsen B iceshelf, which collapsed three years ago, had remained intact for at least the last ten thousand years. Eugene Domack and colleagues of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, studied six sediment cores taken from the antartic peninsula near Larsen B just before it collapsed. The cores are a record of conditions from the last 11,500 years. They show Larsen B was intact for the entire period. "The recent climate warming seen in the Antartic peninsula is larger than any natural episode for the last ten thousand years," says Domack, who blames it for the collapse. "other ice shelves could go if the warming persists and passes theire stability limit", adds Eric Wolff at the British Antartic Survey in Cambridge.

New Scientist, 6 August 2005

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