January 21: The Larsen B, finally

We had a beautiful day on the East coast of the Peninsula yesterday, and an ok day on the West side. But it was good enough to fly. So Erin and I headed to Foyn Point with a seismic installation. I believe it is the only one in the Larsen B embayment and we expect great things from it when the remainder of the ice shelf breaks out. The picture in this entry is not the greatest, but it is my only one that shows the Larsen B. I took it out of a helicopter looking South. Most of the area shows the sea ice covered bay. All of this was covered by an ice shelf several hundred meters thick, that disintegrated during a few weeks in 2002. The only part that remains of it is the Scar Inlet in the distance.

When these ice shelves break up, the glaciers behind it accelerate and start dumping a lot more ice into the ocean. The Flask Glacier, where we were two weeks ago, is expected to react strongly when the Scar Inlet disappears. This is likely to happen in the next few years, because the ice shelf is already quite fractured.