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Friday 22 May 2015 - 13:27 Makkah mean time-4-8-1436
Antarctica (Photo: Russia Today site)
Washington (IINA) – Antarctica’s 10,000-year-old ice shelves will be totally gone in the next five years, according to a new NASA study.
The study predicted that one of the last remaining sections of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, which is dramatically weakening, most likely will "disintegrate completely" before the end of 2020, CNN reported.
A team led by Ala Khazendar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, found evidence of the ice shelf flowing faster and becoming more fragmented. The flow is creating large cracks in the ice shelf.
"These are warning signs that the remnant is disintegrating," Khazendar said in a NASA press release. "Although it's fascinating scientifically to have a front-row seat to watch the ice shelf becoming unstable and breaking up, it's bad news for our planet."
According to NASA, the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf seems to have been caused by a series of warm summers on the Antarctic Peninsula, which happen during what in the Northern Hemisphere are winter months. Those trends built up to a particularly warm summer in 2002.
It is noteworthy that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, had earlier called to speed up necessary avenues to stop or slow down climate change; otherwise, serious natural disasters will occur.
AB/IINA
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