10:59, 01 May 2009 | GMT +5
New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica
BEIJING. May 1. KAZINFORM A New York City-sized Antarctic ice shelf has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday, Kazinform refers to Xinhuanet.

"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.
Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.
She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming.
The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula, Kazinform cites Xinhuanet.
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