![]() ![]() Depending on the trajectory, it could be as significant as A-68a,” says Brisbourne. The 490 square miles (1270 square kilometers) chunk of ice is. “It’s big enough to influence the ocean, and the salinity of the ocean. CNN A giant iceberg broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica on Friday, not far from a British scientific outpost. Another iceberg last year, A-68a, at one point appeared on a pathway that could harm wildlife on the island of South Georgia but eventually broke up. The break could destabilize the Larsen C ice shelf. However, the new iceberg could still have a significant impact depending on where it ends up. A piece of ice the size of the US state of Delaware is close to breaking off from one of Antarctica's largest ice shelves. One of its biggest calving events was in 1986, with icebergs totalling 11,000 square kilometres breaking off, followed by smaller ones in 1998, 20. Of course it’s an evolution in the ice shelf,” says Mark Drinkwater of the European Space Agency.ĭrinkwater says that the Ronne ice shelf is in a fairly “steady state” where it expands after losing iceberg like this. “In the grand context of things this is not humungous. ![]() While A-76 is the largest iceberg in the world at the moment, it wouldn’t make the pantheon of the 10 biggest icebergs in history. A crucial ice shelf on Antarctica s Thwaites Glacier is on track to collapse within five years, accelerating the melting of the notorious 'doomsday glacier.' Thwaites, which is the size of. Recent research suggests that waning sea ice surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula. CNN When temperatures in Antarctica soared to 38 degrees Celsius above normal around 70 Fahrenheit in March, a teetering ice shelf the size of Los Angeles collapsed. It was around the time temperatures soared to minus-12 degrees Celsius, more than 40 degrees warmer than. The part of the ice sheet that it calved from was floating, so the iceberg shouldn’t have any impact on sea level rise. However, high temperatures alone do not fully explain rapid ice shelf collapse. The Conger Ice Shelf, spanning approximately 460 square miles, collapsed around March 15. ![]() The tabular-shape of A-76 is typical of icebergs, and the horizontal lines on it are a sign of the stresses that caused it to break from the ice sheet, says Brisbourne. "The good news is that if we keep to the 2 degrees of global warming that the Paris agreement promises, the sea level rise due to the East Antarctic ice sheet should be modest," Wolff wrote in a commentary on the JPL study.įailure to curb greenhouse gas emissions, however, would risk contributing "many meters of sea level rise over the next few centuries," he said.Read more: Life found beneath Antarctic ice sheet ‘shouldn’t be there’ One East Antarctic calving event that took the world by surprise was the collapse and disintegration of the massive Conger-Glenzer ice shelf in March, possibly a sign of greater weakening to come, Greene said.Įric Wolff, a Royal Society research professor at the University of Cambridge, pointed to the study's analysis of how the East Antarctic ice sheet behaved during warm periods of the past and models for what may happen in the future. But even in East Antarctica, a region whose ice shelves were long considered less vulnerable, "we're seeing more losses than gains," Greene said. The accelerated glacial calving, like ice thinning, was most pronounced in West Antarctica, an area hit harder by warming ocean currents. The losses measured from calving outpaced natural ice shelf replenishment so greatly that researchers found it unlikely Antarctica can return to pre-2000 glacier levels by the end of this century. IMAGERY FROM SPACEįor their analysis, Greene's team synthesized satellite imagery from visible, thermal-infrared and radar wavelengths to chart glacial flow and calving since 1997 more accurately than ever over 30,000 miles (50,000 km) of Antarctic coastline. When temperatures in Antarctica soared to 38 degrees Celsius above normal around 70 Fahrenheit. The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the. In recent decades, though, warming oceans have weakened the shelves from underneath, a phenomenon previously documented by satellite altimeters measuring the changing height of the ice and showing losses averaging 149 million tons a year from 2002 to 2020, according to NASA. An iceberg larger than New York City has broken off an ice shelf in Antarctica, scientists say. Link Copied The Larsen C ice shelf on October 31, 2017, after a massive iceberg calved from it. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |