A massive crack in the ice may herald an enormous rift in the ice of the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica.
Credit:NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Satellite images suggest that the glacier is poised to calve off an iceberg or icebergs that size of New York City. Sea ice has kept the unstable region locked in, but as this Oct. 26, 2012 Landsat 7 image reveals, the spring melt has cleared the sea in front of the glacier’s calving face.