A gigantic iceberg, speculated to be twice the size of New York City may soon break off from an ice shelf, NASA has warned. Researchers at NASA has been monitoring the crack which is leading to the break off for the past 35 years, and now they have found that the crack has started accelerating towards another fissure under the ice shelf called Halloween crack.
As the larger crack makes the way completely across, an iceberg roughly the size of at least 660 square miles will break off in a process scientifically called calving.
"We don't have a clear picture of what drives the shelf's periods of advance and retreat through calving. The likely future loss of the ice on the other side of the Halloween Crack suggests that more instability is possible," said Chris Shuman, a glaciologist working at NASA in a recent statement.
Schuman added that it is pretty difficult to predict the exact time when the iceberg will break off. However, he made it clear that researchers are closely monitoring the ice shelf to know more about the way in which the iceberg is going to break off from the ice shelf.
"It could calve within the next few days, or weeks, or possibly even longer," said Shuman.
The findings by NASA suggests that Antarctica is losing ice and ice shelves a higher rate than it can regenerate.
A few weeks back, a team of NASA scientists had discovered a large cavity under the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. The study report published in the journal Science Advances revealed that the melting of glaciers like these could result in a global sea level rise. After the study, researchers also revealed that the Thwaites Glacier holds sufficient ice to raise the global sea levels by at least 65 centimeters.
