On a recent survey flight, which was designed to be fairly routine flying back and forth across the main trunk of Pine Island Glacier, a large crack was spotted in the floating ice tongue in the front of the glacier — a crack large enough to bury a building 16 stories high. This means more changes are coming in the future of this active ice stream.
Pine Island Glacier has been under intense focus as one of the fastest moving, and rapidly thinning glaciers in Antarctica. The planned survey was a grid back and forth across the main trunk of Pine Island Glacier. The pilots refer to this kind of survey as “mowing the lawn.” This type of data collection is essential for putting together a more complete “picture” of the glacier surface, depth, and its underlying surface, and its “grounding line.” The grounding line, shown here as the white line running through the image of the survey plan, is the front edge of where the glacier is frozen all the way to the bottom surface beneath it. The glacier extends beyond the grounding line but as a “floating tongue” of ice.