A massive iceberg was calved from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in 2017
© Getty / ESA/Hubble & NASA/S. Jha/Acknowledgement: L. Shatz / Joshua Stevens using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey
The thinning of an icy ‘glue’ that holds fractured ice together may drive ice shelf collapse in Antarctica. Ice shelves are massive stretches of ice that build up over many thousands of years. But warming air and rising ocean temperatures have been driving ice shelves to disintegrate. Many of Antarctica’s ice shelves have fractured or collapsed in the past couple of decades, but exactly what’s accelerating the ice loss has been unclear.