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A deep crack on on Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf has nearly severed off one of the largest icebergs ever recorded:
One of the largest icebergs ever recorded — 2,500 square miles, about the size of Delaware — is about to break off Antarctica, according to the European Space Agency. The iceberg could speed up the break-off of other ice chunks, eventually eating away at a barrier that prevents ice from flowing to the sea.
The impending iceberg is being carved from one of the continent's major ice shelves, called Larsen C. Scientists have been monitoring Larsen C for months now, as a deep crack has slowly extended over the course of 120 miles. Only about three miles of ice are keeping the iceberg attached to the shelf, ESA says. No one knows when it will break off — it could be any moment — but when it does, the iceberg will likely be 620 feet thick (about the height of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York) and contain roughly 1 trillion tons of ice. It'll be drifting north toward South America, and could even reach the Falkland Islands. "If so it could pose a hazard for ships in Drake Passage," Anna Hogg from the University of Leeds, said in a statement.
Also at BBC.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:19PM (3 children)
Whenever I see measurements like "American football field" it kind of implies the author is generally not worth any attention span or time. Its very origin implies people that spend more time on football than science and as such know less than those that do spend their attention on science.
The practical aspect is that every football field is slightly different and the measurement is very bigoted against people that don't involve themselves with that as they will not have a real life experience sufficiently internalized to matter. And measurements like square meter may be hard to grasp in the beginning but with time a person will get reference points and so can make sense of the abstract number. At this stage with the benefit that the measurement unit learned is consistent across nations and subjects.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 06 2017, @03:09PM (1 child)
So, karma-whoring, let's call this school of icebergs (as it will whelp) nearly a third the area of Wales, and more than a fifth the area of Belgium.
South Americans - you're on you're own. Shall we call it an East Falkland, and if you can't relate to that, then don't even think of invading it!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday July 07 2017, @12:28AM
Converting into recognized scientific measurements---
Slightly more than .3 Waleses or .2 Belgiums, and slightly smaller than the East Falklands.
Based on Kaszz's calculations and a bit of internet searching, the meltwater would fill about 400 million Olympic sized swimming pools, the unmelted ice around 430 million.
Unfortunately, I was unable to determine how many Libraries of Congress could be filled, as I was able to find the number of volumes held by the LofC, but not the spatial volumes of the buildings themselves, nor even the average volume of the books therein.
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday July 06 2017, @03:15PM
I modded your comment as informative, then decided to respond with a genuine thank-you. The football fields comment was meant as a joke.