Key ice shelf in Antarctica has shrunk by 85 per cent: ESA

E-Paper | June 07, 2026

The northern Antarctic peninsula has been subject to atmospheric warming about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 50 years, a figure that is several times greater than the global average. – Reuters Photo

PARIS: A vast ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula, a hotspot for global warming, has shrunk by 85 per cent in 17 years, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat satellite show that the so-called Larsen B ice shelf decreased from 11,512 square kilometres (4,373 square miles) in 1995, an area about the size of the Gulf state of Qatar, to only 1,670 sq km (634 miles) today.

Larsen B is one of three ice shelves that run from north to south along the eastern side of the peninsula, the tongue of land that projects towards South America.

From 1995 to 2002, Larsen B experienced several calving events in which parts of the shelf broke away. It had a major breakup in 2002 when half of the remainder disintegrated.

Larsen A broke up in January 1995.

“Larsen C so far has been stable in area, but satellite observations have shown thinning and an increasing duration of melt events in summer,” the agency said in a press release. Ice shelves are thick floating mats of ice, attached to the shore, that are created by the runoff into the sea from glaciers.

Scientists say they are extremely sensitive to changes in atmospheric temperature and can be hollowed out from below by warmer ocean currents.

Ice shelves are not the same as ice sheets, the vast blanket of frozen water that covers Antarctica.

If these melted, even partially, they would drive up sea levels, threatening small island states and coastal cities. But the scientific evidence is that the icesheets so far are stable.

“These observations are very relevant for measuring the future behaviour of the much larger ice masses of West Antarctica if warming spreads further south,” ESA quoted Helmut Rott, a professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, as saying.

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Sci-Tech

Stormon

Apr 07, 2012 05:33am

If you melt a ice cube in a glass of water will the water level rise ? Correct answer no because the weight of the ice cube has already displaced the water .

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Amanda

Apr 08, 2012 04:22am

No Stormon, the level will rise because water molecules expand when they are in liquid form more so than ice

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Amanda

Apr 10, 2012 03:56pm

So Yvonne, are you saying thermal expansion will not occur? Because it seems to be at the core of physics that when things heat up they expand...

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Yvonne

Apr 09, 2012 07:38am

Wrong Amanda, Stormon is partly correct. The buoyancy calculations are based on mass or the total number of water molecules not the volume it occupies. Unless you are suggesting that 100 molecules of frozen water weighs more than 100 molecules of liquid water. However, Stormon is also wrong in that the neutrality of melting ice to sea level only applies to ice that floats in water. The majority of the ice in Antarctica sits on land and will directly add to the sea level.

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dennisambler

Apr 09, 2012 09:11pm

This is another non story, as the bulk of the disintegration of Larsen B was between 1998 and 2002. The article states the area of the Larsen B was 11512 sq km in 1995. According to NSIDC, it was already down to 4604 sq km in 2002, and lost 3250 sq km in a period of 35 days commencing January 31st 2002. The article now say it is 1670 sq km. To say that it shrank, implies it melted. That would be some melting, when the short Antarctic summer on the Peninsula only reaches a maximum of around 2 deg C above freezing. In fact it disintegrated, shattered into thousands of ice bergs and subsequent currents moved the ice into warmer waters, where of course it then melted but contributed nothing to imaginary sea level rise. Although the theory is that melt water broke up the ice, it is more consistent with an older theory of wave harmonics, whereby wave action resonates with the frequency of the ice, rather like the classic idea of an opera singer breaking a glass with a high note. Over a long time period, stresses are induced until suddenly a fracture pressure is reached and it explodes in the same way as a toughened glass car windshield explodes when hit with a sharp object. It is inconceivable that melt water could achieve such a rapid and spontaneous disintegration as that seen in the Larsen B shelf. Ice shelf collapse is not unique. It is known that Prince Gustav Ice Shelf, which collapsed in 1995, had also collapsed several thousand years ago. George VI Ice Shelf also on the Antarctic Peninsula experienced an extensive retreat about 9500 years ago, more than anything seen in recent years. All without help from anthropogenic CO2.

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