Satellite imagery confirms an enormous iceberg, around five times the size of Malta, has finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. ![]() In a statement, Mark Belchier, the director of Fisheries and Environment for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, warned that the new iceberg chunks could be a "major" concern for vessels operating in the region as the mini bergs, which have yet to be individually named, continue to break apart. Giant iceberg breaks away from Antarctic ice shelf. ![]() It's likely that A-76A will also inject large amounts of freshwater into the nearby ocean, which could disrupt marine food webs. By the time A-68A had fully melted away in mid 2021, scientists estimated it had dumped around 1 trillion tons (900 million metric tons) of freshwater into the ocean, the majority of which was shed near South Georgia. ( 8) that have been widely used in modeling studies. ![]() But the hefty berg narrowly missed the island before being ripped in half by ocean currents and later disintegrating into an "alphabet soup" of smaller named icebergs.Ī-76A was never on a direct collision course with South Georgia, but it could still end up impacting the nearby marine ecosystem. Here, we define large icebergs as Antarctic icebergs with horizontal area greater than 3 km 2, which is larger than all icebergs in the size distributions of Gladstone and Bigg ( 23) and Merino et al. The world's previous largest iceberg, A-68A, also crumbled near South Georgia in December 2020 after being slingshotted through the Drake Passage.Īt the time, conservationists were concerned that the Delaware-size A-68A could end up colliding with South Georgia, which would have put the island's diverse marine ecosystem at risk of collapse. About 75 of Antarctica is buttressed by floating ice shelves (Fürst et al., 2016), which regulate the rate that grounded ice is lost to the ocean (Bell et al., 2018).Since the 1990s, many ice shelves have thinned, and in some cases disintegrated (Banwell et al., 2013 Robel & Banwell, 2019 Scambos et al. Antarcticas melting Doomsday glacier could raise sea levels by 10 feet, scientists say - ABC News Antarcticas melting Doomsday glacier could raise sea levels by 10 feet, scientists say The loss of the Thwaites glacier could destabilize western Antarctica. (Image credit: Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory) The question among scientists was not if the growing rift would finish traversing the shelf and break, but when Now, nearly four years later, it has done just that. The data is then sent back to Cambridge for analysis, even during the Antarctic winter when there are no staff on the station, it is dark for 24 hours and the temperature drops below minus 50 degrees Celsius.īAS Director Jane Francis emphasized that the changes in the Brunt Ice Shelf are a natural process and that there is no evidence to suggest that climate change has played a role in the calving event.NASA's Terra satellite captures an image of A-76A, in the Drake Passage near Antarctica on Oct. In February 2019, a rift spanning most of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica appeared ready to spawn an iceberg about twice the size of New York City. The research teams have been anticipating this event for several years and use an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments to measure the ice shelf’s movements and deformation. The Halley Research Station, which is located on the brunt ice shelf, was moved 14 miles inland in 2016 and scientists only deploy staff to the station from November to March (Antarctic summer) to ensure safety. The first signs of changes in Chasm-1 were spotted by satellites in 2012 and since then the BAS has been closely monitoring the ice shelf’s behavior. The break off is the second major calving from this complex. 1 day ago &0183 &32 After a five-day multinational search across an area the size of Massachusetts. 30 September 2019 COPERNICUS DATA/SENTINEL-1/StefLhermitte The EU's Sentinel-1 satellite system captured these before and after images By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent The Amery Ice Shelf in. The brunt ice shelf itself is around 500 feet thick and the area that houses the research station is not affected by the recent calving event, but the impact of such events on the ice shelf remains unpredictable. Scientists say the impact of this new huge iceberg, around 600-square-miles in size and 490 feet thick, is unpredictable. Despite the impressive size of the iceberg, scientists say that this event is not connected to climate change.ĭominic Hodgson, a glaciologist with BAS, stated that the calving event is “part of the natural behavior of the Brunt Ice Shelf” and that there is no evidence to suggest that it is connected to recent rapid calving events on the Larsen C Ice Shelf.
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