Larsen C

Larsen C is the remaining part of the giant Larsen Ice Shelf belonging to Antarctic Peninsula. Its extension is around 68400 km^2 and it is distant around 2000 km far from the southern part of South America.

In the last years one of the largest Iceberg ever discovered is breaking from the ice shelf: its size is around 5000 km^2 and it is comparable to Wales. Up to this January only 20 km of ice is keeping the iceberg attached to the Larsen ice shelf and the line break is significantly grown from June 2016 to December 2017.

The first showed image is an OLCI Sentinel 3-A image acquired on December 31th, 2016. The break is indicated in red, just to the far right (in the middle) of the ice shelf and next to the sea ice:

The following images are two animated gif created respectively with two images of OLCI Sentinel 3-A and two images of SAR Sentinel 1-A. For both instruments the two images have been acquired in different times, 10Nov-31Dec for Sentinel 3-A and 12Nov-11Jan for Sentinel 1-A (GRDM Extra Wide single polarization products).

GIF images allow us to evaluate the line break evolution in the two-months time window and extimate its growth, of around 30 km: in the next months the iceberg is going to separate from the ice shelf:

Here below the kml showing the Ice Shelf acquired with OLCI on google earth and a clarifying image describing the line break evolution in the last years (credit to the Swansea University http://www.swansea.ac.uk/media-centre/latest-research/giantantarcticicebergsettobreakawaysayswansearesearchers.php):

Products:

https://scihub.copernicus.eu
S1A_EW_GRDM_1SSH_20170111T001522_20170111T001622_014776_018105_DB53
S1A_EW_GRDM_1SSH_20161112T001525_20161112T001625_013901_016603_88C7
S3A_OL_1_EFR____20161110T111930_20161110T112230_20161110T130108_0179_010_379_4140_SVL_O_NR_002.SEN3
S3A_OL_1_EFR____20161231T123803_20161231T124103_20170101T174719_0179_012_337_4139_LN1_O_NT_002.SEN3

Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016-2017.

Written by Salvatore Tarchini