Antarctica: a huge iceberg will fall | E …

An ice block of more than 1,700 square kilometers, double the area of ​​the city of New York, will soon be released from Antarctica, NASA said in a statement. Although scientists have not specified when this will happen, they warned that this break-up could affect the rest of the continental shelf and feared for its effects. The phenomenon will be generated because two cracks are close to the junction.

In its statement, NASA compared a photograph of this area, taken from the Landsat satellite, dated January 1986 with another, dating from January 2019, where a crack pbades through the west is a region of the 39; Antarctica. According to the space agency, when this crack will meet another that crosses from south to north, the territory will be transformed into a huge iceberg.

The second gap had already existed and remained stable for 35 years, NASA said, but its growth accelerated suddenly and spread north at a speed of more than 4 km per year. "It is perhaps the largest broken iceberg on the Brunt ice floe since the observations began in 1915," the space agency said on its website. And he explained that scientists are currently studying if "the loss will result in an even larger surface change".

Due to the unpredictable changes in ice, the British Antarctic Survey's Halley station in Antarctica is on alert, one of the main bases for research on the Earth, the atmosphere and space science. The place generally runs all year, but has been closed twice in recent years due to the evolution of the crack.