![]() This growth further sped up between 24 th June and 27 th June reaching a rate greater than 10 meters/day. During this period, the crack grew by 17 kms. However, the largest increase in the crack since January took place between 25 th May and 31 st May. The crack casuing the iceberg to break grew over a period of years. This break has left the Larsen C ice shelf 12 % smaller and has changed the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. It is believed to be among the 10 largest icebergs ever recorded. ![]() The area of this iceberg is approximately 5,800 kms 2, which is approximately 4 times the size of the state of Delhi and weighs approximately 1 trillion tonnes. It is now reported to be adrift in the Weddell Sea. ![]() Human actions have lifted average global air temperatures by about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial levels, according to scientists, and Antarctica is one of the world's fastest-warming regions.On 12 th July 2017, a giant iceberg broke off from Antarctic Penninsula. This did not mean other shelves were not already feeling the effects of warming, however.Īnd in the future, "there is certainly with climate warming a chance of ice shelves being removed further and further south along the Antarctic peninsula," Drinkwater said. Credit: NASA WorldviewĪccording to O'Leary, "we're not aware of any link to human-induced climate change", while Drinkwater called it "a typical iceberg calving event" along a very old fault lines in the ice shelf. Image from July 12, 2017, from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Darker colors are colder, and brighter colors are warmer, so the rift between the iceberg and the ice shelf appears as a thin line of slightly warmer area. Thermal wavelength image of a large iceberg, which has calved off the Larsen C ice shelf. "These Larsen (shelves) existed already at the beginning of the Holocene"-the current geological period that began about 12,000 years ago.īut O'Leary and Drinkwater said this particular iceberg calving was unrelated to global warming. "It is a sign that ice shelves are more and more vulnerable," she told AFP. "We're going to be watching very carefully for signs that the rest of the shelf is becoming unstable," added Swansea University glaciologist Martin O'Leary, another MIDAS project member.įor Catherine Ritz of France's CNRS research institute, the iceberg calving pointed to rising pressure from global warming. tons).(John Sonntag/NASA)ĭrinkwater, however, said satellite data and years of on-site investigation show the shelf "is in a very stable configuration." The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, is described as weighing 1 trillion tons (1.12 trillion U.S. The iceberg broke off from the Larsen C ice shelf, scientists at the University of Swansea in Britain said. A vast iceberg with twice the volume of Lake Erie has broken off from a key floating ice shelf in Antarctica, scientists said Wednesday J. 10, 2016 aerial photo released by NASA, shows a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf. Warmer ocean water erodes the underbelly of the ice shelves, while rising air temperatures weaken them from above. The calving of ice shelves occurs naturally, though global warming is thought to have accelerated the process in some regions. Separation occurred somewhere between Monday and Wednesday, and was recorded by a NASA satellite. "The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C ice shelf reduced in area by more than 12 percent, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever," the team added. The gargantuan ice cube will probably be named A68. "The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes, but it was already floating before it calved away so has no immediate impact on sea level," said a team of researchers from the MIDAS Antarctic research project. It created an iceberg of about 5,800 square kilometres (2,200 square miles), with a volume twice that of Lake Erie, one of the North American Great Lakes. A crack in the Larsen C ice shelf, a drifting extension of the land-based ice sheet, finally broke through after inching its way across the frozen formation for years.
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