"A crack that could create an iceberg the size of Delaware - and destabilize one of the largest ice shelves in the Antarctic - has branched out and begun to widen more quickly, a scientist said on Wednesday.

The new fissure has turned toward the shelf's ocean edge, potentially speeding up the iceberg's process of breaking off, said Dan McGrath, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a project partner with UK-based monitoring group Project Midas, which reported on the new crack on Monday.

'It’s taking basically a sharp hook toward the calving front,' said McGrath, using a technical term to describe the ocean side of the ice shelf.

It is reasonable to link the event and the shrinking ice shelves in Antarctica to global warming, Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who is not connected with project."

Tom James reports for Reuters May 3, 2017. [2]