an ice berg the size of Delaware has detached from the Larson-C ice sheet:

A hunk of ice the size of Delaware broke off from the Antarctic Peninsula.

Sometime in the last few days, scientists say an iceberg weighing roughly a trillion metric tons separated from the Larsen C Ice Shelf and began its long, slow drift northward through the Weddell Sea.

The 2,400 square-mile mass of ice won’t immediately raise sea levels, but its loss has probably altered the profile of the continent’s western peninsula for decades to come, scientists say.

The Larsen Ice Shelf consists of a series of many floating ice chunks. It is named for Norwegian explorer Capt. Carl Anton Larsen, who discovered it in 1893.

By the time it was first photographed in the 1960s, the fateful crack was already visible, according to NASA.

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The release of this iceberg has reduced Larsen C, the largest ice shelf in the Larsen formation and the fourth-largest on the continent, by more than 12%. Scientists says the remaining ice shelf could now be less stable, which could pave the way for a more severe event: disintegration.

“This ice shelf is on the trajectory to collapse in the coming decades,” said Eric Rignot, a UC Irvine glaciologist and research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

While this has no direct impact on sea level, the ice was already floating in the water, it does have the effect of clearing the path for increased ice flows from land based glaciers, like removing a cork from a bottle, which could raise sea levels.

Also, the weight of ice over the land in Antarctica and Greenland has actually pushed the land down, so not only will the water melt eventually cause sea level rise, but more land will erupt which will further raise sea levels.

This is something that we need to address sooner rather than later.