![]() The remnant’s main tributary glaciers are named Leppard, Flask and Starbuck - the latter two after characters in the novel Moby Dick. “What is really surprising about Larsen B is how quickly the changes are taking place,” Khazendar said. Its three major tributary glaciers are fed by their own tributaries farther inland. Located on the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Larsen B remnant is about 625 square miles (1,600 square kilometers) in area and about 1,640 feet (500 meters) thick at its thickest point. The free-floating remnant will shatter into hundreds of icebergs that will drift away, and the glaciers will rev up for their unhindered move to the sea. Khazendar noted his estimate of the remnant’s remaining life span was based on the likely scenario that a huge, widening rift that has formed near the ice shelf’s grounding line will eventually crack all the way across. Data on flow speeds came from spaceborne synthetic aperture radars operating since 1997. Khazendar’s team used data on ice surface elevations and bedrock depths from instrumented aircraft participating in NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a multiyear airborne survey campaign that provides unprecedented documentation annually of Antarctica’s glaciers, ice shelves and ice sheets. This study, the first to look comprehensively at the health of the Larsen B remnant and the glaciers that flow into it, has been published online in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Without them, glacial ice enters the ocean faster and accelerates the pace of global sea level rise. ![]() Ice shelves are the gatekeepers for glaciers flowing from Antarctica toward the ocean. ![]()
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