There are photos at the link.. and FYI 5,000 square kilometers is right at 2,000 square miles. I hope they film the actual calving. 16 hours ago - The crack that looks set to spawn a giant iceberg in the Antarctic has continued to spread. The rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown a further 10km since 1 January. ... The Larsen B Ice Shelf further to the north famously shattered following a similar large calving event in 2002. The crack that looks set to spawn a giant iceberg in the Antarctic has continued to spread. The rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown a further 10km since 1 January. If the fissure propagates just 20km more, it will free a tabular berg one-quarter the size of Wales. That would make it one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded, according to researchers at Swansea and Aberystwyth universities, and the British Antarctic Survey. News of the lengthening crack in the 350m-thick floating ice shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula comes from the EUs Sentinel-1 satellite system. Comprising two spacecraft, this orbiting capability can continuously monitor Larsen C no matter what the weather is doing because its radar sensors see through cloud. Their data indicates the fissure now extends for some 175km. But just how long it will take before the 5,000 sq km block finally breaks free is anyones guess, says Swansea's Prof Adrian Luckman. "The rift tip has just entered a new area of softer ice, which will slow its progress," he told BBC News. "Although you might expect any extension to hasten the point of calving, it actually remains impossible to predict when it will break because the fracture process is so complex. "My feeling is that this new development suggests something will happen within weeks to months, but there is an outside chance that further growth will be slow for longer than that. "Sometimes rift growth is triggered by ocean swell originating elsewhere, which is also hard to predict." When the berg splits away, interest will centre on how the breakage will affect the remaining shelf structure. The Larsen B Ice Shelf further to the north famously shattered following a similar large calving event in 2002. The issue is important because floating ice shelves ordinarily act as a buttress to the glaciers flowing off the land behind them. In the case of Larsen B, those glaciers subsequently sped up in the absence of the shelf. And it is the land ice - not the floating ice in a shelf - that adds to sea level rise. If Larsen C were to go the same way it would continue a trend across the Antarctic Peninsula. In recent decades, a dozen major ice shelves have disintegrated, significantly retreated or lost substantial volume - including Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller, Jones Channel, and Wilkins. Another development to watch will be the behaviour of the free floating berg, and its progress away from the Antarctic. "Sea ice in the region circulates clockwise with the Weddell Gyre, rather than remaining in one place, and icebergs can be carried with this, sometimes out into the Southern Ocean," explained Prof Luckman. "It all rather depends on how soon the iceberg breaks up, and how the iceberg draft compares with ocean depths. "Ocean depths are not perfectly known in the region precisely because the near continuous ice cover makes ship operations difficult." Many of the big tabular bergs produced in this region of the Antarctic get swept up in currents that eventually take them north towards the British overseas territory of South Georgia. There, they can be caught in shallow waters to gradually wither away. This ocean conveyor is the same one exploited by Ernest Shackleton to get his crew to safety when their ship, the Endurance, was crushed in thick sea-ice in the Weddell Sea in 1916. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38686626
So what? I mean C'est Naturale. aka It Ain't My Fault. Deus vult. Weather happens and l got buckets of rain at this moment in Southern California. What of Antarctic Geothermal activity? Or other avenues of exploration. Just because some big, 'berg is breaking off doesn't mean it is the Jews nor Man Made Global Warming. The Real Solution is as simple as Science itself. Stop Continental Drift! Except for California Pass the beef. Moi Beef is 3 of the 4 major food groups chocolate is the other. All else is miscellaneous. r > g View attachment 47163 They like Global Warming too. Like a toll on Northwest Passage shipping Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic, regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.
Anyway to hook some lines on that baby if she breaks loose and drag her up off the coast of californication? Ought to be enough water in that berg to turn the deserts of Ca greener than the Green Giant's thumb. For a century. If someone gives you a lemon, turn it into lemonade. Or suck on it so the face puckers up real ugly like.
This is a symptom of something very serious and all it gets is two jokes? If ice moves from land to water this would raise sea levels and there is a lot of land that is under threat because of this.It is ice that has broken away that has previously kept ice on the land falling into the sea. America, nice knowing you. Pity the damage you do to the world impacts on more than America.
Portion of Larsen Ice Shelf about to break away... Crack in Antarctic Larsen Shelf Grew Quickly in January February 07, 2017 - VOA has an update on that giant crack in an Antarctic ice shelf scientists say is now sprinting towards its almost certain break from the continent. The crack is in part of the Larsen C Ice Shelf, which floats off the coast of northwestern Antarctica.
Harnessing the fresh water trapped in a iceberg would be fabulous. - - - Updated - - - There have always been icebergs.
