The ice is melting everywhere.
One place that seems to be melting especially rapidly is the Antarctic Peninsula. Five years ago, the A68 iceberg broke off there and floated north.
This winter, the Larsen-B ice sheet “suddenly” disintegrated [1]. Specifically, a large area of sea ice had been “embayed” since 2011, broke up within days in mid January.
This is high summer in Antarctica, so conditions are warm-ish. The sudden break up may have been pushed by sustained warm “foehn” winds blowing across the ice.
Satellite imagery shows that this area has been rapidly changing for the last 20 years, as an ice shelf has essentially disappeared. The sea is full of ice chunks, and forms a shelf in the winter. But overall, the current conditions offer much less resistance to the glaciers flowing into the sea, so the loss of ice on the peninsula is likely to accelerate.
For the record, melting sea ice does not change sea level, but ice flowing from land into the ocean does. So, once again, glub!
- Kathryn Hansen, After more than a decade fastened to the coastline, a large expanse of sea ice broke away from the Antarctic Peninsula, in Earth Observatory – Image of the Day, February 2, 2022. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149410/larsen-b-embayment-breaks-up
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