![]() While the main part of the rift doesn't seem to have grown over the past couple of months, the new branch points northward, toward the Southern Ocean - making it seem more likely the ice block will break off. Now scientists say that a 6-mile fork in the rift has formed at its leading edge. A single large crack in the ice shelf has rapidly developed since 2010, lengthening to about 120 miles. The giant ice block is part of the Larsen C ice shelf, which is the leading edge of one of the world's largest glacier systems. It often indicates a user profile.Ī slab of ice nearly twice the size of Rhode Island is breaking off a massive Antarctic glacier, and new satellite images do not bode well for the block's survival. ![]() "Our glaciologists will now be watching closely to see whether the remaining Larsen C ice shelf becomes less stable than before the iceberg broke free," he said.Įric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, said the breaking off of the iceberg "is part of a long-term major loss of the ice shelves in the peninsula, progressing southbound and resulting from climate warming."īut Swansea University glaciologist Martin O'Leary, a member of the MIDAS project, called it "a natural event, and we're not aware of any link to human-induced climate change."Īnd a spokeswoman for the British Antarctic survey said there's not enough information to say whether the calving is an effect of climate change, though there's good evidence global warming has caused thinning of the ice shelf.Īs for any danger to navigation, scientists said the iceberg will probably break up and its pieces will circle Antarctica for years or decades rather than drifting northward into shipping lanes.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. That sped up the slide of glaciers, which contributed to sea-level rise, David Vaughan, director of science at the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement. Two other Antarctic ice shelves, farther north on the Antarctic Peninsula, collapsed in 19. The image released by European Space Agency ESA shows a photo taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on Jwhen a lump of ice more than twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off the Larsen-C ice shelf in Antarctica, spawning one of the largest icebergs on record and changing the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. And since the ice was already floating, the breakup won't raise sea levels in the short term, the project said in a statement.īut it removed more than 10 percent of the ice shelf, and if that eventually hastens the flow of glaciers behind it into the water, there could be a "very modest" rise in sea level, the project said. The iceberg is considered unlikely to pose any threat to shipping. Scientists say global warming has caused a thinning of such shelves, but they differ on whether the latest event can be blamed on climate change. It broke loose from the Larsen C ice shelf, which scientists had been monitoring for months as they watched a crack grow more than 120 miles (200 kilometers) long. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, according to Project MIDAS, a research group based in Britain. ![]() It covers an area of roughly 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers), more than twice the size of Luxembourg. While such "calving" of icebergs is not unusual, this is an especially big one. ![]() A vast iceberg with twice the volume of Lake Erie has broken off from a key floating ice shelf in Antarctica, scientists said Wednesday July 12, 2017. 10, 2016 aerial photo released by NASA, shows a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf. The event, captured by satellite, happened sometime in the past few days when the giant chunk snapped off an ice shelf. One of the biggest icebergs ever recorded, a trillion-ton behemoth more than seven times the size of New York City, has broken off of Antarctica, triggering disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is to blame. ![]()
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