According to news from the European Space Agency, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is “hanging by its last thread” to the  Antarctic Peninsula The researchers are studying satellite images that show continuing disintegration of the shelf and a fracture in the ice bridge connecting the shelf to land. The bridge helps stabilize the ice shelf, and its collapse could hasten the break-up of the shelf.

Surprising to scientists at the European agency and other research centers is the fact that the break-up is occurring in the Antarctic winter. One news headline read: “Even the Antarctic Winter Cannot Protect Wilkins Ice.” In addition, these first-ever recorded winter break-ups are different from earlier events this year. Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center noted that the pieces are moving out as large bergs and not as a divided mixture of ice.

 Recording a break-up during the dark Antarctic winter is possible because of an observation spacecraft called Envisat. It is the largest earth observation spacecraft ever built and carries optical and radar instruments to provide continuous observation and monitoring of land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps. It can produce high-quality images even through clouds and darkness.

Scambos also points out that warm water may be reaching the underside of the Wilkins shelf and thinning it. Another researcher studying the images acquired by the observation spacecraft says the scientific community was “too conservative when it predicted the Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years. It is going more quickly.”

Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to Charcot and Latady Islands. It began retreating in the 1990s with large sections breaking off rather than the calving ordinarily associated with glaciers. Now the ice sheet is being monitored daily.