City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica

LeadSongDog writes "Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite is showing that the Antarctic's Pine Island ice shelf has calved a 'berg of 720 square kilometres, 'the size of Hamburg.' Angelika Humbert says 'The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide.' The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters.' Goodbye Florida.

Comments

Re:what?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

>> The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level.

Umm.. isn't it impossible to have land that isn't deeper than sea level?

If it's possible anywhere on Earth, it's surely possible on a continent that can have a "western" part despite covering all geographic longitudes.