Iceberg 4 times the size of Manhattan breaks off Antarctic glacier
An iceberg 4 times the size of the island of Manhattan has broken off West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, the fastest melting glacier on the continent.
Stef Lhermitte, a satellite observation specialist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, took to Twitter on Saturday share a photo depicting the alarming event.
Breaking news from Pine Island Glacier, which lost 267km2 of icebergs today, after the internal crack resulted in a large calving event 1/n pic.twitter.com/sLwGTyNTfC
— Stef Lhermitte (@StefLhermitte) September 23, 2017
Lhermitte said that the 100-square-mile glacier marked the 5th largest glacial calving event since 2000, comparing it to a 2015 incident where a nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke away from the same glacier.
Weather.com reports that Pine Island Glacier loses 45 billion tons of its ice each year, which amounts to a 1-millimeter rise in global sea levels every eight years.
It is estimated that the glacier could contribute a substantial 1.7 feet to global sea levels if it melted entirely.
However, if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to collapse, it could cause a staggering 10-foot sea level rise, causing large portions of southern states like Florida and Louisiana to sustain catastrophic flood damage.
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