Our science and operational teams continue to monitor the ice shelf in real-time to ensure it is safe, and to maintain the delivery of the science we undertake at Halley”. “This calving event has been expected and is part of the natural behaviour of the Brunt Ice Shelf. BAS reported that the station, which was relocated farther inland in 2016 as the chasm widened, was unaffected by the recent break.īAS glaciologist Professor Dominic Hodgson adds this important note: (For reference, the Antarctic Peninsula and its ice shelves are located on the opposite side of the Weddell.) The shelf has long been home to the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Research Station, where scientists study Earth, atmospheric, and space weather processes. The glacial ice in the shelf flows away from the interior of Antarctica and floats on the eastern Weddell Sea. National Ice Center has named it Iceberg A-81. 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.Īccording to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the break occurred late on January 22, 2023, and produced a new iceberg with an area of 1550 square kilometers (about 600 square miles). ![]() 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. “But the actual inland ice, that’s the really unknown question.An iceberg twice the size of New York City broke off Antarctica this week - something scientists have predicted for four years. An iceberg around the size of Greater London broke off Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf due to a natural process called 'calving'. “I think the ice shelf will be gone in a matter of years to decades,” Holland said. And if that goes, researchers fear nothing may stop the rest from doing the same. Even though total collapse of the glacier could take hundreds or thousands of years, the edge is falling apart much sooner. What worries scientists is that the leading edge of the huge glacier is breaking apart in many places. These edges with warm water underneath border the ocean and provide “back support” that holds the rest of the glacier in place, preventing it from falling into the sea, Holland said. The key to the future of Thwaites is the ice shelf and its tongue. And that’s ironic – and troublesome for researchers – because overall Antarctic sea ice is unusually low for this time of year, Larter said. Much of the problem is that loads of sea ice have gravitated around the huge iceberg. It measures about 43 miles by 28 miles, almost the size of Rhode Island, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. ![]() ![]() This iceberg used to be the tongue or leading edge of Thwaites until it broke off about 20 years ago, Larter said. The satellite images of the finger-shaped iceberg were. Thwaites is spawning more icebergs as it falls apart, Holland said. The A-76 iceberg, the largest in the world, has just separated from the Antarcticas Ronne Ice Shelf. “Nobody can get to Thwaites this year,” Holland told the Associated Press on Monday. The smaller Dotson ice shelf is about 87 miles (140km) west of the Thwaites ice shelf. He is hoping that along that blinding white ice and its rugged frozen cliffs he can learn about the unseen warm ocean water nibbling away at both Dotson and Thwaites from below. Improvising, Holland decamped at the nearby Dotson ice shelf to do his research where no human had been before. David Holland, an environmental scientist at New York University, who planned to drill deep through the Thwaites ice shelf to measure the water’s warmth below it, is achingly close but not quite there.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |