PIG – The crack

The Pine Island Glacier flows into the ocean. It loses mass by melting of ice by warm ocean water from underneath and by calving big ice bergs. Calving happens every few years, when a big ice berg is released into the ocean. The satellite image below (collected by TerraSAR X) shows a crack where the next ice berg is about to be released. This radar picture was taken in early January. Not only does it show the crack, but the linear feature at the lower right shows the snow machine traverse track between our different field camps!

Our field site was only 20 km away from the crack, so we got to fly over and have a look.

Snow drifting into the crack

The crack in early December. It is almost entirely connected across the shelf

Airplane shadow in the crack