Delaware-sized iceberg could break off the Antarctic ice-shelf 'in hours, days or weeks'!

Image courtesy: NASA

New Delhi: On 18th November 2016, NASA's IceBridge mission – an airborne survey of polar ice – completed an eighth consecutive Antarctic deployment.

On November 10, the scientists photographed an oblique view of a ginormous rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf.

The image of the rift was released in December 2016, along with a concerning report that said that the ice shelf is close to breaking off and as per NASA, it is about 70 miles long, more than 300 feet wide and about a third of a mile deep.

The crack completely cut through the ice shelf but it did not go all the way across it – once it does, it will produce an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware.

If the ice shelf does break off, which is what the scientists are afraid will happen eventually, it would reportedly be the largest event since the recorded iceberg calving in 2000.

Now, another report carries the news that the soon-to-be largest iceberg ever recorded, could break off soon.

Currently, the iceberg is attached to the shelf but is moving at rates faster than previously recorded, moving at speeds of roughly 32 feet per day. The team monitoring the rift is unsure of when the split will occur but does warn that it could happen within hours, days or weeks.

But is it really worrying? Jonathan Kingslake, a glaciologist and assistant professor at Columbia University’s earth and environmental science department, tells Newsweek that there will likely be “loads of headlines saying scientists are worried, but that’s not really right. We're not worried about this causing anything really catastrophic.”

According to a report in Tech Times, the massive iceberg would not have too much of an impact on sea levels. If this event caused the rest of the ice shelf to break apart then we could see a rise in sea levels.

"If you remove an ice shelf, all of the glaciers that used to feed into it start putting more ice out into the ocean and that's where you get your potential contributions to sea level rise," said a member of the Midas team monitoring the ice shelf.

Overall, the glaciers that feed into the Larsen C ice shelf contain about 10 centimeters of global sea level equivalent, but researchers do not think all of it would go into the sea, the report said.