The largest ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula is being thinned by warmer seas and air and could catastrophically break up, scientists said on Wednesday.
The loss of the Larsen C ice shelf could occur within a century but an earlier collapse cannot be ruled out, with major consequences for global sea levels, they said.
"If this vast ice shelf... was to collapse, it would allow the tributary glaciers behind it to flow faster into the sea. This would then contribute to sea-level rise," said Paul Holland from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) who led the new research.
Larsen C is the fourth largest ice shelf in the world, covering around 55,000 square kilometers (21,235 square miles), or nearly twice the size of Belgium.
Two far smaller companion shelves on the eastern side of the peninsula -- the tongue that juts from Antarctica towards South America -- have collapsed in the last two decades.
The first, Larsen A, was lost in 1995. In 2002, this was followed by Larsen B -- at 3,250 sq. km, the size of the US state of Rhode Island.
The Larsen B event had no precedent since the end of the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago, according to glaciologists.
It tallied shockingly with the discovery that the peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet.
Temperatures there have risen by around 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 50 years, several times the world average.
Published in the journal The Cryosphere, the new study combined data from satellite measurements and eight radar surveys over 15 years, from 1998 to 2012.
PHOTO: This October 27, 2014 photo provided by NASA shows the shadow of NASA's DC-8 on Antarctic sea ice.
CREDIT: AFP.