World News
Ice shelf could vanish by 2020─── 12:14 Sun, 17 May 2015
Pasadena - A new NASA study has found that one of the last remaining sections of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf is dramatically weakening and predicts that what it will most likely "disintegrate completely" before the end of this decade.
CNN reports that a team led by Ala Khazendar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, found evidence of the ice shelf flowing faster and becoming more fragmented.
The flow is creating large cracks in the ice shelf. The ice shelf's disintegrating state came into light after it partially collapsed in 2002.
The collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf seems to have been caused by a series of warm summers on the Antarctic Peninsula, which happen during what in the Northern Hemisphere are winter months.
Ice shelves are extensions of glaciers and function as barriers. Their disappearance means glaciers potentially will diminish more quickly, as well, increasing the pace at which global sea levels rise.
CNN
