Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Antarctica’s wandering ice shelf
GPS markers usually pinpoint a spot on the earth’s surface to help everything from map-making to navigation.
This one (left) spectacularly didn’t.
In fact, it wandered hundreds of miles (km) this year on an iceberg, blown by winds or carried by ocean currents in huge pirouettes off the coast of Antarctica.
When glaciologist David Vaughan (above) of the British Antarctic Survey stuck the pole holding the GPS (global positioning system) tracking device into the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica in January, the ice felt solid as rock.
Stuart McDill of Reuters TV and I had landed with him in a small plane mounted with skis on a 40-km-long floating ice bridge which had been in place probably for thousands and thousands of years. But it was weakening and about to snap in what Vaughan said was a sign of global warming.
