The Larsen B shelf, on the eastern side of the peninsula, lost about 1,714 square kilometers since November of 1998, while the Wilkins on the southwest side lost nearly 1,100 square kilometers in March of '98. The sudden appearance of thousands of small icebergs suggest that the shelves are essentially broken up in place and then flushed out by storms or currents afterward. The current disintegration of the ice shelves in the area is occurring at an even faster rate than earlier breakups gave reason to anticipate. To have retreats totaling 3,000 square kilometers in a single year is clearly an escalation. Within a few years, much of the Wilkins ice shelf will likely be gone.
Ice shelves are long-term floating plates of ice attached to continents.
They form from the outflow of large polar glaciers into the ocean. The major concern with Antarctic warming centers around the possible threat of rising sea levels due to melting ice. If the ice shelves on the colder main part of Antarctica were to collapse, vast quantities of water would be released. Some researchers say that this would not happen unless the peninsular conditions spread to the rest of the continent and persist for 200 years, others say sea levels could rise earlier. Antarctica is the fifth largest continent and contains about 90 percent of the world's glacial ice.