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CNN Live Today

Breakup of Ice Shelf May Point to Climate Change

Aired March 19, 2002 - 12:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Attention focused on an area in the Antarctic after an iceberg larger than the state of Delaware has broken off. Scientists call it B22, pictured here in a satellite image from space. More now on this story and what's happening down there at the South Pole.

Joyce Ohajah, of Independent Television News has our report today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOYCE OHAJAH, ITV CORRESPONDENT: Experts have been predicting the collapse of this antarctic ice shelf for years, but they describe the dramatic breakup that has taken place in less than a month as staggering. The Larsen ice shelf, which is just under the size of Cambridgeshire and 200 meters thick, has broken into small icebergs and fragments. On these satellite pictures, the red line shows its size in 1995. The blue line illustrating the extent of its collapse. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (AUDIO GAP) out climate change as a cause.

DAVID VAUGHAN, BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY: We can make the connection between the loss of the ice shelves and the rise in temperature, atmospheric temperature. What we can't do at the moment is tell you why that rise in temperature has occurred, and why, specifically, on the Antarctic peninsula it has been so dramatic.

OHAJAH: Their findings come on the day a new exhibition on climate change opens at the science museum in London. The interactive exhibits focus on how scientists are tacking the issues, and how governments need to take responsibility for the global changes.

MICHAEL MEACHER, BRITISH ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: It is a wake-up sign, I think, to the whole world, that when an iceberg of such enormous proportions can break up, which is probably not happened before in human experience in the last quarter of a million years, that shows the effect which we are having on the climate.

OHAJAH: Scientists are concerned. In 2004, they will launch a new satellite which will survey the thickness of the ice here, and monitor closely how our climate is changing.

Joyce Ohajah, ITV News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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