These photos are courtesy of The Chicago Tribune.

The picture you see above is the Larson ice shelf in the process of breaking off a section. Ice shelves surround Antarctica. They result when glaciers come together and move out, surrounding the edge of Antarctica. One ice shelf is called the Ross ice shelf; it's as big as Texas. Another ice shelf is the Ronne Ice shelf. A third is the London ice shelf. Another ice shelf is the one you see in the above picture, the Larson ice shelf. The London ice shelf is 650 feet thick. It's 1,250 square miles and the size of Rhode Island. A large section, 1,250 square miles of it, broke off on March 20, 2002 and crushed into lots of little icebergs. When the London ice shelf broke off it raised sea level 200 feet. Over a five year period, about 3,420 square miles of it have broken off. It's 700 feet thick and it has been there for 12,000 years. Only 40% of the ice shelf remains. The reason for the ice shelves breaking off is the warming of the climate.

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