New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica

TROMSOE, Norway: An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said yesterday.

"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.

Humbert said about 700 sq km of ice - bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City - has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.