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FORMOSAT-2 documents Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse

This series of satellite images released by the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data center on March 25 shows the Wilkins Ice Shelf as it began to break up. PHOTO: AFP

The Taiwanese remote-sensing satellite FORMOSAT-2 has conducted a high-resolution photo surveillance of the collapsing Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the most detailed observation ever of an ice shelf disintegration, reports said yesterday.

A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf began to break off on Feb. 28 and NASA has since issued a request for countries around the world to focus any available high-resolution satellites on the shelf, the FORMOSAT-2 operations center said.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf -- located 1,600km south of Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America -- covers a sea area of 16,000km2 near the Antarctic Peninsula. Since Feb. 28, an area of the shelf approximately twice the size of Taipei City has collapsed.

NASA made the request for assistance because the satellites already monitoring Antarctic ice shelves are all low resolution ones, such as the 1km resolution Terra satellite operated by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Images taken at such a resolution do not reveal small-scale changes.

After being repositioned, FORMOSAT-2 -- the second of three weather satellites launched and operated by Taiwan -- commenced photo-surveillance on March 8, producing images with a 2m resolution covering areas of up to 24km, staff at the satellite's operations center said.

The staff are provided by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and the National Space Organization.

After analyzing the satellite images, geoscientists warned that the shelf is still in danger of large-scale disintegration, as the only buffer between the remaining shelf and rising sea temperatures is an ice belt of less than 6km wide. Large-scale disintegration of the shelf would raise the sea level, they said.

"This is the first time that such a high-resolution satellite has been deployed to monitor the Antarctic," said Liu Cheng-chie (劉正千), associate professor at NCKU's Department of Earth Sciences.

Liu, who assists in the operation of the satellite and established an automatic image processing system for it, said that most commercial satellites used for Antarctic observation were limited.

The detail of the satellite images taken by FORMOSAT-2 was such that the front of the shelf could be seen breaking into strips of ice several kilometers in length, but only hundreds of meters in width. As more of the shelf collapsed, so more sea water would be allowed to seep deeper into the structure, triggering further disintegration, he said.
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