Huge Antarctic iceberg about to break off and slide into the sea
It isn’t clear what damage the huge iceberg will do to the surrounding landscape
6
January, 2016
A
huge iceberg, one of the biggest ever recorded, is about to break off
Antarctica.
Part
of the Larsen C ice shelf is now hanging by only a relative thread
after a crack expanded quickly last month. There is now only about 20
kilometres of ice attaching it to Antarctica – and when it splits
off, it will form an iceberg as big as a US state or Trinidad and
Tobago.
When
that happens, it will radically change the landscape of the Antarctic
Peninsula, according to scientists who are tracking it. It could even
lead to the wider break-up of the entire shelf, according to a
statement from the scientists.
In
all, the shelf will shed an area more than 1,930 square miles,
scientists from Project Midas at the University of Wales said.
Climate change ‘pause’ does not exist, scientists show, in wounding blow for global warming denialists
Ice
shelves are areas of ice, often huge, floating around on the sea at
the end of glaciers.
If
they are lost, they could allow those glaciers to slide faster
towards the sea as temperatures rise because of global warming. That
will help contribute towards rising sea levels and could have
catastrophic effects across the world.
Several
ice shelves – including Larsen B – have disintegrated in recent
years as a result of climate change.
Andrew
Fleming, remote sensing manager at the British Antarctic Survey who
also tracks the Larsen C, said the ice was being thawed both by
warmer air above and by warmer waters below.
In
some cases, big icebergs simply float around Antarctica for years,
causing little threat to shipping lanes as they melt. More rarely,
icebergs drift as far north as South America.
"Larsen
B shattered like car safety glass into thousands and thousands of
pieces,” he said. “It disappeared in the space of about a week.”
Last
year was easily the warmest on record, as a result of greenhouse
gases and the El Nino weather event. Changes to sea temperatures and
levels are likely to be one of the most significant results of that
change, which could in turn bring extreme alterations in the weather
From RT
News of the impending Larsen C split comes as a study by the University of California and a group of scientists from non-profit group Berkeley Earth revealed the rate of ocean warming has risen from 0.07 to 0.12 degrees Celsius in the last 19 years.
From RT
Larsen C ice shelf schism may form giant Antarctic iceberg (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
©
NASA
RT,
6
January, 2016
A
glacier more than 80 times the size of Manhattan is on the brink of
splintering from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf and floating off
into the ocean.
Over
time, a rift has steadily formed along the massive ice sheet, which
lies in the Weddell Sea near the northwest of the Antarctic.
Pictures
released by NASA last
November showed a 100-meter (328ft) wide and 500-meter deep (1640ft)
crack slicing the incredible sub-zero temperature environment.
According
to Project
Midas,
a UK research group documenting the effects of global warming in the
area, 10 percent of the overall Larsen C ice mass is now close to
calving into the sea.
It
could mean the creation of a 5,000 sq km (193 sq mile) iceberg.
In
a statement, Project Midas revealed that the large iceberg is
connected to the Larsen C mainland only along a 20km (12.5 mile)
stretch. It added: “This
[separation] will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic
Peninsula.”
Project MIDAS
The rift on Larsen C has grown even further, and the ice shelf is now poised to calve:
The
threat of massive glacial upheaval has not only put the future of the
ice shelf at risk, but also brought danger to the door of those
carrying out research at the Weddell Sea location, according to the
British Antarctic Survey.
“The
calving of this large iceberg could be the first step of the collapse
of Larsen C ice shelf, which result in the disintegration of a huge
area of ice into a number of icebergs and smaller fragments,” said
Professor David Vaughan, director of science at the organization.
©
NASA
He
said researchers are no longer camping on the ice due to concerns
over the ice mass’ stability: “Because of the uncertainty
surrounding the stability of the Larsen C ice shelf, we chose not to
camp on the ice this season. Researchers can now only do day trips
from our Rothera Research Station with an aircraft nearby on
standby.”
In
2002, two-thirds of the nearby Larsen
B ice
shelf collapsed in less than six weeks. NASA compared the sudden
environmental change to a “car
accelerating from 55 to 440mph”.
News of the impending Larsen C split comes as a study by the University of California and a group of scientists from non-profit group Berkeley Earth revealed the rate of ocean warming has risen from 0.07 to 0.12 degrees Celsius in the last 19 years.
The
analysis also found that the switch over from ship to buoy
temperature measurement created a ‘cooling bias’ which led to
talk of a climate change slowdown or “global warming hiatus”.
Published
in the journal Science
Advances,
the study suggests the switch over from ship to buoy measurement lead
to varying results from three major climate research centers: the
Hadley Centre, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
and Japan’s meteorological agency.
“These
results serve as a robust, independent validation of the NOAA
temperature record and show us that the new NOA temperature record is
probably the best estimate of global ocean temperatures for the last
15 years,”
said
Zeke Hausfather, a UC Berkeley graduate and lead author of the paper.
“They
show that NOAA scientists weren’t cooking the books.”
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