Un huge chunk of ice shelf Larsen C of Antarctica would be breaking for the next few months and would thus form one of the 10 largest icebergs ever seen.
If the iceberg finally breaks apart, and it is as it appears to be, it will be the result of a huge crack on the ice shelf that has been growing steadily for the past decades.
The crack suddenly began to grow over 17,7 miles in December and it is now 80 kilometers long with only 18,5 kilometers to break completely. Warmer water under the ice shelf and warmer air above may have contributed to the rift's exponential growth, although scientists currently have no clear proof of the actual causes.
Swansea University professor and crack monitoring team leader Adrian Luckman told the BBC that if the iceberg does not separate in the next few months, you would just be very surprised that it didn't happen like this:
There haven't been enough cloud-free images from LandsatBut we have been able to combine a couple of radar images of Esa Sentinel-1 to figure out the extent, and so it seems almost inevitable that total rupture will occur.
El real problem with iceberg breaking is that this could affect the rest of Larsen C. The neighboring ice shelf is known as Larsen B and has been fragmented into thousands of pieces since 2002. If Larsen C suffers the same fate, the sea level could rise by eight centimeters by 20 centimeters, which could damage coastal habitats.
Will a matter of months that we can really know if that ice shelf, that we already knew about his breakup 4 months ago, remains untouchable and is not finally separated from Antarctica.