![]() Parts of the Wilkins Ice Shelf also disintegrated, in 1998 and in 2008. Seven years later, the Larsen Ice Shelf lost another 3,250 square kilometers of ice. In January 1995, 1,500 square kilometers of this shelf suddenly disintegrated. The Larsen Ice Shelf lies on the eastern side of the northernmost tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Besides the normal phenomenon of iceberg calving, ice shelves that drift to warm climates can mimic one of the most dramatic things ice shelves can do: rapidly disintegrate. The breakup and melting are exactly what you’d expect under these conditions, but the details of the process still interest glaciologists because the melt and breakup of icebergs may shed light on what will happen to Antarctic ice shelves as climate warming continues. Having migrated to warmer waters, B-15J began to break apart. By early December 2011, B-15J was floating in the Pacific Ocean roughly 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) east-southeast of New Zealand. Over the past decade, B-15 has broken into many pieces, and one of them, B-15J, eventually drifted north. The iceberg - named B-15 - was 183 miles long and 23 miles wide, or nearly the size of Connecticut. In March 2000, a colossal iceberg calved off the Ross ice shelf, Antarctica’s largest. Every so often, these ice shelves calve large icebergs. Fed by these glaciers, ice shelves form along the Antarctic coast, floating as thick, frozen plates on the sea surface. ![]() Much of the ice that blankets Antarctica is tied up in glaciers that slide slowly toward the sea. ![]()
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