Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) captured the early stage of the disruption of the ice bridge that connects the Wilkins Ice Shelf to Charcot and Latady Islands on 2 April 2009 at 05:18 UTC. The new rifts that developed along the length axis of the ice bridge are visible. The first detachment along these new rifts occurred about seven hours later. Credits: ESA (Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University)

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is at risk of partly breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula as the ice bridge that connects it to Charcot and Latady Islands looks set to collapse. The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts forming along its centre axis resulted in a large block of ice breaking away. The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images acquired on 2 April by ESA’s Envisat satellite confirm that the rifts are quickly expanding along the ice bridge. Dr Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics, Münster University, and Dr Matthias Braun from the Center for Remote Sensing, University of Bonn, witnessed the recent development during their daily monitoring activities of the ice sheet using data from Envisat and the German Aerospace Center’s TerraSAR-X satellite. … "In the past months, we have observed the ice bridge deforming and its narrowest location acting as a kind of hinge," Humbert said. "During the last year the ice shelf has lost about 1800 sq km or about 14% of its size. The break-up events in February and May 2008 happened in just hours, leaving the remaining part of the ice bridge in a fragile situation," Humbert explained. "Rift developments during October and November resulted presumably from the loss of 1220 sq km along the northern ice front during June and July 2008."  …

Collapse of the ice bridge supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf appears imminent