NASA studies Antarctic ice crack

NASA has been taking a creatively close look inside a crack in the Antarctic ice shelf that threatens to break off and create a city-sized iceberg.
Using data collected late last year by scientists, NASA have created an animated virtual ride through a giant canyon of Antarctic ice in Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica. And while sea ice is expanding around much of the ice cap, Dr Pat Langhorne from Otago University says this is an area scientists are focused on.
“It’s a region that’s well known to be warming, there is a smaller ice extent in that area than there has been since satellites began,” says Dr Langhorne. The crack’s about 32 kilometres long and 50 metres deep, down to the water line of the Amundsen Sea.