In October 2011, NASA scientists noticed a large crack forming in the Pine Island Glacier in the West Antarctica, and it has been growing since. On Monday, the growth reached its natural end and created a massive iceberg, approximately 8 times the size of the island of Manhattan, which now floats in the Amundsen Sea. The iceberg is 720 square kilometres (278 square miles) in area. Nina Wilkens of the Alfred Wegener Institute, which first documented the calving via satellite, said, “The larger crack on the Pine Island Glacier extended initially to a length of 28 kilometres. Shortly before the birth of the iceberg, the gap then widened bit by bit so that it measured about 540 kilometres at its widest point.” When asked if the iceberg is connected to the climate changes, AWI Professor Angelika Humbert is cautious, noting that “creation of cracks in the ice shelf and the development of new icebergs are natural processes.” However, Humbert said that the Pine Island Glacier is the fastest moving glacier in Antarctica, moving four kilometres a year from the Hudson Mountains to the sea. This amazing speed is aided by changes in wind direction that have occurred in the Amundsen Sea. New winds bring warm water under the glacier, melting from below.
