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The Larsen Ice Shelf (67°30′S, 062°30′W) is a long, fringing ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of Antarctic Peninsula from Cape Longing to the area just southward of Hearst Island. Named for Captain Carl Anton Larsen, who sailed along the ice front in the Jason as far as 68°10'S during December 1893.

In finer detail, the Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves that occupy (or occupied) distinct embayments along the coast. From north to south, the three segments are called Larsen A (the smallest), Larsen B, and Larsen C (the largest) by researchers who work in the area. The Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated in January of 1995. The Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in February of 2002. The Larsen C ice shelf appears to be stable.

The Larsen disintegration events were unusual. Typically, ice shelves lose mass by iceberg calving and by melting at their upper and lower surfaces. The disintegration events are linked to the ongoing climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, about 0.5 Â°C per decade since the late 1940's as result of global warming.

Larsen B ice shelf

During 2002-01-31–2002-03-07 the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed and broke up. 3,250 km² of ice 220 m thick broke off. The shelf could have been stable for up to 12,000 years ago, essentially the entire Holocene period since the last ice age, according to Queen's University researchers . By contrast, the Larsen A Ice Shelf "was absent for a significant part of that period and reformed beginning about 4,000 years ago, according to the study".

Despite its great age, the Larsen B was clearly in trouble at the time of the collapse. With warm currents eating away the underside of the shelf it had become a "hotspot of global warming"(Fred Pearce The Last Generation p92). What however took glaciologists by surprise was the rapidness of the breakup - a mere three days. The factor they had ignored was water. Melted water having formed on the surface slipped down into cracks and then, acting as wedges, levered the shelf apart.(Fred Pearce The Last Generation p92)

This collapse has revealed a thriving ecosystem 800 m (half a mile) below the sea. "Despite near freezing and sunless conditions, a community of clams and a thin layer of bacterial mats are flourishing in undersea sediments. The discovery was accidental. U.S. Antarctic Program scientists were in the northwestern Weddell Sea investigating the sediment record in a deep glacial trough twice the size of Texas. .

Read more at Wikipedia.org