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A set of new satellite images show that the same tsunami that swept across large areas of Japan, on March 11, also broke off giant icebergs in Antarctica. This astonishing revelation is proof that the effects of the 9.0 earthquake that caused the deaths of 15,000 people in Japan were felt halfway around the world. 

The mighty tsunami rippled through the Pacific Ocean, progressed around New Zealand and reached Antarctica in less than 19 hours. Although, the tsunami only reached a foot high when making contact with the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, having covered 8,000 miles, the European Space Agency satellite Envisat was able to access the damage. “This is the first observational evidence linking a tsunami to ice-shelf calving”, the authors of the study have declared. The ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice. The primary mechanism of mass loss is iceberg calving, in which a chunk of ice breaks off from the seaward front of the shelf.

Thanks to the satellite Envisat it was possible to ascertain the damage caused by the giant wave. In total, 48 square miles of icebergs broke off as a result of the tsunami in a region that had remained virtually unchanged for more than half a century. The study also reveals that the largest iceberg calved from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf into the Ross Sea (a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica) measured a whopping 7 miles long by 4 miles wide.

But the aftermath of the tsunami is not only a problem to the Antarctica regions. At home, in Japan, work is still ongoing in order to minimize its catastrophic effects. There’s still a lot of cleaning up and building being done. But the one big thing still causing most of the headaches for Japanese officials is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since it was struck by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, the plant has been having a persistent problem with leaks. Three reactors operating at the time of the quake went into meltdown and emergency generators created with the sole goal of helping circulate water through the cores were wiped out that day.

A group of volunteers – true Japanese heroes - have been trying to save the situation by keeping water flowing to the cores and several fuel storage pools above the reactors. The worrying thing is that that same water seems to be flowing out to basements of the buildings and eventually making its way into the Pacific Ocean. Environmentalists and scientists are very concerned about possible contamination, which would only add trouble to the already critical situation.