Antarctic ice shelf nears breaking

The Paris-based European Space Agency (ESA) has warned that Antarctica's massive Wilkins ice shelf could break away in the near future. 

According to the pictures taken by Envisat, the Earth-monitoring satellite, the icy bridge that connects the ice shelf to the continent is dramatically weakening. 

"The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts" appeared and a large block of ice broke away, said ESA. 

Located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins Ice Shelf originally covered about 13,000 square kilometers and began retreating in the 1990s, the Agency statement said. 

According to Angelika Humbert of Germany's Munster University, the shelf lost 14 percent of its mass last year and two large chunks of the ice bridge broke away, thinning it to 900 meters in some parts. 

As a result, "In the past months, we have observed the ice bridge deforming and its narrowest location acting as a kind of hinge," the ESA statement quoted Humbert as saying. 

Scientists are not sure whether global warming is responsible for the shelf's breakup or the warm currents from the Southern Ocean that might have shaved it down from underneath. 

Antarctica has lost some seven shelves in the past 20 years. This is while experts in the early 1990s believed that it would take 30 years for a shelf as large as the Wilkins to be lost. 

The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a 2.5C rise in temperature in the past 50 years, which is higher than the global average, AFP reported.