That makes icebergs like this different from glaciers or ice sheets, which are found on land, and which do raise global sea levels when they break off into the ocean and melt. Once it melts, the new iceberg will not lead to a sea level rise, because it was part of a floating ice shelf – just like a melting ice cube doesn’t increase the level of the drink in your glass. Scientists aren’t attributing this particular break-off to climate change, and instead believe it’s part of the natural cycle of iceberg calving in the region. Iceberg calving is part of the natural cycle, with huge chunks of ice breaking off the ice shelf at regular intervals. That makes it slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, ESA said. The iceberg is shaped like a giant ironing board, measuring around 170 kilometers (105 miles) in length and 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in width. The iceberg broke off the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.The world’s largest iceberg has calved from Antarctica over the past few days, a giant floating piece of ice close to 80 times the size of Manhattan. This was due to a warm water current from the east whittling away at the vital “pinning points” that anchor the shelf to the land.Ĭopyright 2021 LiveScience, a Future company.
Live Science reported in April that the Thwaites Glacier, or the “Doomsday Glacier,” was discovered to be melting faster than previously thought. But not all parts of West Antarctica have been quite so lucky. The Ronne Ice Shelf, which birthed the recent iceberg, is mostly spared from influxes of warm water that disrupt the Antarctic's natural cycle of ice calving and regrowth. The rogue berg shattered into a dozen pieces before it caused any harm, Live Science previously reported. After splitting from the Antarctic ice sheet in 2017, A-68A was set loose by ocean currents in 2020 and came perilously close to colliding with South Georgia Island, a breeding ground for seals and penguins. Satellites will continue to track the new iceberg, much as they did for A-68A, the previous title holder for the world's largest iceberg. “It's important to monitor the frequency of all iceberg calving, but these are all expected for now.” “A76 and A74 are both just part of natural cycles on ice shelves that hadn't calved anything big for decades,” Laura Gerrish, a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, wrote on Twitter.
Scientists don't think that human-induced climate change caused the calving of A-76 or its nearby predecessor, A-74. The NSIDC also says that the continent of Antarctica, which is warming at a faster pace than the rest of the planet, holds enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet (60 meters). However, ice shelves help to slow the flow of glaciers and ice streams into the sea so indirectly, the loss of parts of an ice shelf eventually contributes to rising seas, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The satellites confirmed an earlier observation made by the British Antarctic Survey, which was the first organization to notice the breakaway.īecause the ice shelf that this berg calved from was already floating on water, the event won't directly impact sea levels. The 1,667-square-mile (4,320 square kilometers) iceberg-which now the world’s biggest and has been called A-76, after the Antarctic quadrant where it was first spotted-was captured by the European Union's Copernicus Sentinel, a two-satellite constellation that orbits Earth's poles. The berg is now floating freely on the Weddell Sea, a large bay in the western Antarctic where explorer Ernest Shackleton once lost his ship, the Endurance, to pack ice. The finger-shaped chunk of ice, which is roughly 105 miles (170 kilometers) long and 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide, was spotted by satellites as it calved from the western side of Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, according to the European Space Agency. An enormous iceberg, a little bigger than the state of Rhode Island, has broken off of Antarctica.
0 kommentar(er)
