File:Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf threatened by climate change.jpg

English: This image, acquired by one of the two satellites of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 16 February 2021, shows the northern edge of the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. According to a study recently published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, more than a third of the Antarctic ice shelves are at risk of collapsing into the sea if global temperatures were to exceed pre-industrial levels by 4°C. Among the ice shelves investigated in the study, Larsen C is one of the four found to be at risk of disintegration. Larsen C had already made headline news in 2017, when it calved an enormous iceberg known as A-68, which drifted for nearly three years, threatening to run aground off the island of Saint George in the South Pacific in the autumn of 2020 and eventually disintegrating. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission consists of twin satellites (Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B), which both carry a multispectral optical sensor with 13 spectral channels and a maximum spatial resolution of 10 metres. Thanks to these characteristics, the Sentinel-2 satellites enable the monitoring of the process of ice formation and melting in the often inaccessible polar regions.