(CNN) -- A new satellite study of ice shelves in West Antarctica has revealed they are steadily losing their grip with adjacent land and could intensify the acceleration of ice loss in the area.The ice shelves (floating extensions of land-based ice sheets) in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment are fracturing at their margins on rocky bay walls, according to glaciologists from the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).
Lead author of the study Joseph MacGregor said in a statement: "Typically, the leading edge of an ice shelf moves forward steadily over time, retreating episodically when an iceberg calves off (breaks off and floats out to sea), but that is not what happened along the shear margins."
"Anyone can examine this region in Google Earth and see a snapshot of the same satellite data we used, but only through examination of the whole satellite record is it possible to distinguish long-term change from cyclical calving," MacGregor added. Read More
