A vast iceberg of the size of the Isle of Man (seven times Manhattan, two times Isola d'Elba) has broken away from the Antarctic coast, threatening the collapse of a larger ice shelf that is now “hanging by a thread”.

Satellite images have revealed that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf have been lost since the end of February, suggesting that climate change could be causing it to disintegrate much more quickly than scientists had predicted. “The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey(BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

The following are images taken from the National Snow and Ice Data Center website where you can read everything about this issue.







A spectacular video from BBC: