The Wilkins Ice Shelf, located on the northwest peninsula of the Antarctic continent, lost 700 square kilometres of solid ice earlier this year, and further losses were expected at the time.

‘The retreat of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and largest of its kind,’ David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey told the Telegraph. The Wilkins Ice Shelf, which would have taken hundred of years to form, has already lost a third of its 16,000 square kilometres since it was first measured a few decades ago.

Vaughan said temperatures in the Antarctic have risen by 3°C this century, and most scientists blame this rise on man-made pollution. ‘Eight separate ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the past few decades,’ Vaughan added. ‘There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has been the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere.’

The loss of ice shelves doesn’t cause sea levels to rise as they were largely floating in the water already, but the fear is that if floating ice sheets disappear, they will release land-based glaciers into the sea, which will add more water to the oceans.

‘The changes to the Wilkins Ice Shelf provide a fabulous natural laboratory that will allow us to understand how ice shelves respond to climate change and what the future will hold for the rest of Antarctica,’ Vaughan said.

July 2009