Even the Antarctic winter cannot protect Wilkins Ice Shelf
Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area
of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s
Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented
episode to occur in winter. Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of
floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula,
is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February
2008, an area of about 400 km² broke off from the ice shelf,
narrowing the connection down to a 6 km strip; this latest event
in May has further reduced the strip to just 2.7 km. This
animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced
Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 June,
highlights the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting
thousands of kilometres of the ice shelf from further break-up.
According to Dr Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote
Sensing of Land Surfaces, Bonn University, and Dr Angelika
Humbert from the Institute of Ge