Two rifts on the Brunt Ice Shelf, in West Antarctica, are close to calving, or breaking off, creating an iceberg over 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) in size — about twice the size of New York City.
The rifts were stable for 30 years, but in 2016, an image showed the two advancing toward each other. Scientists say the break could trigger the further retreat of the entire shelf. We’ve mapped the timeline of the split.
From the archives: In 2017, we published an in-depth look into the risk of Antarctica’s ice sheets collapsing as a result of global warming. Last year, we reported that the region was melting three times as fast as it was a decade earlier.
