September 21, 2004 Since 2002, when the Larsen B ice shelf broke
away from the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists have
witnessed profound increases in the flow of nearby glaciers into
the Weddell Sea. These observations were made possible through
NASA, Canadian and European satellite data. Two NASA-funded
reports, appearing in the Geophysical Research Letters journal,
used different techniques to arrive at similar results.
Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and
the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colo., said the
findings prove ice shelves act as "brakes" on the glaciers that
flow into them. The results also suggest climate warming can
rapidly lead to rises in sea level. Large ice shelves in the
Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated in 1995 and 2002, as a result
of climate warming. Almost immediately after the 2002 Larsen B
ice shelf collapse, researchers observed nearby glaciers flowing
up to eight times fa