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Impacts of the Larsen-C Ice Shelf calving event

A giant iceberg has calved off the Larsen-C Ice Shelf, the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, reducing its total area by ~10%. Whilst calving events are a natural phenomenon and thus not necessarily indicative of changing environmental conditions, such events can impact ice-shelf stability.

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Figure 1: Schematic showing the processes affecting ice-shelf stability.
Figure 2: The timing of crack growth on the Larsen-C ice shelf.

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Acknowledgements

This work was led by an independent research fellowship (no. 4000112797/15/I-SBo) jointly funded by the European Space Agency, the University of Leeds, and the British Antarctic Survey, with the support of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling from grant cpom30001. The authors gratefully acknowledge the ESA and the European Commission Copernicus programme for the use of Sentinel-1 data.

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Correspondence to Anna E. Hogg.

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Hogg, A., Gudmundsson, G. Impacts of the Larsen-C Ice Shelf calving event. Nature Clim Change 7, 540–542 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3359

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