Reported By:
| Edited By: |Source: ANI |Updated: Mar 11, 2018, 04:17 AM IST
New findings have suggested that a huge chunk of ice from a Greenland glacier, almost double the size of Manhattan, is on the brink of breaking away.
Jason Box, a climatologist with Ohio State Unversity’s Byrd Polar Research Centre said it’s not clear when the 62-sq-mile ice shelf, which is dangling from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, will detach from the mainland.
“I don’t know exactly when,” Live Science quoted him as telling OurAmazingPlanet.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened today — or if it happened next summer.
“I think it’s more likely to occur during periods of melt, and that’s coming to an end, so I’m losing confidence it’s going to break this year,” Box said.
Box revealed that the scientists first noticed a jagged crack in the Petermann Glacier’s ice — a growing rift he dubbed ‘The Big Kahuna’ — in 2008.
“We can see the crack widening in the past year through satellite pictures, so it seems imminent,” he added.
In August 2010, the same glacier produced an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan, but researchers believe that the fresh spectacular break could have more dire consequences.
