Gaping crevasses that penetrate upward from the bottom of the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula make it more susceptible to collapse, according to University of Colorado Boulder researchers who spent the last four Southern Hemisphere summers studying the massive floating sheet of ice that covers an area twice the size of Massachusetts.
But the scientists also found that ribbons running through the Larsen C Ice Shelf – made up of a mixture of ice types that, together, are more prone to bending than breaking – make the shelf more resilient than it otherwise would be.
The research team from ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences presented the findings Dec. 6 at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco.