14 DAY TRIAL // The tiny stretch of ice visible in the image to the left is a portion of the Amery Ice Shelf, a region of the Antarctica that is very narrow, but extremely significant to the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). A new study shows that this narrow basin drains about 16 percent of all EAIS ices.
The Lambert Glacier is drained through Amery as well. This is the largest glacier ever discovered. It has a depth of about 2.5 kilometers (1.55 miles), is roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles) wide, and some 400 kilometers (250 miles) long.
The glacier is the subject of numerous remote-sensing studies because bodies of ice of its size are extremely prone to being influenced by temperature shifts. Global warming and climate change are partially driven by melting glaciers.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has already been affected by warming ocean waters, but thus far the EAIS has shown more stability. In some years, average temperatures even dropped, raising hopes that the ices lost in the west might be recovered in the east.
But new data indicate that this is not the case. While EAIS ice loss levels are still small, they are getting larger by the year, and the Amery Ice Shelf is a critical gateway through which this happens.
As you can see in the image, numerous chunks of ice can be seen coming out of the ice shelf. Most of them are produced through a natural, decades-long phenomenon called calving. Understanding how it occurs in this particular region is essential for developing computer models of EAIS' behavior.
The new image was snapped by the American space agency's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) collected the data in optical wavelengths, in natural colors, on January 27, 2012.
“It shows a portion of the Amery Ice Shelf, where three giant cracks, or rifts, meet. The largest rift runs in the same direction as the ice flow, and widens toward the edge of the ice shelf (image center),” NASA says in a press release.
“Smaller rifts extend toward the east and west, and the tip of the western rift narrows and curves significantly (image lower left).” the statement concludes.