LiveScience: Antarctica's summer meltwater ponds are beautiful killers. Given an escape route down to the ice, the sapphire-blue water jacks open fractures and crevasses in ice shelves, breaking them apart.
Most ice shelves -- floating, frozen plateaus permanently attached to the shore -- have a thick blanket of snow that protects them from meltwater. The snow soaks up water like a sponge. But climate change may soon transform these downy snow blankets into threadbare sheets, putting more ice shelves in the...