315 Billion-Tonne[*] Iceberg Breaks off Antarctica:
The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years.
The calved block covers 1,636 sq km in area[**] - a little smaller than Scotland's Isle of Skye - and is called D28.
The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could in future pose a hazard to shipping.
Not since the early 1960s has Amery calved a bigger iceberg. That was a whopping 9,000 sq km in area.
Amery is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, and is a key drainage channel for the east of the continent.
[...] The Scripps researcher [Prof Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography] stressed that there was no link between this event and climate change. Satellite data since the 1990s has shown that Amery is roughly in balance with its surroundings, despite experiencing strong surface melt in summer.
"While there is much to be concerned about in Antarctica, there is no cause for alarm yet for this particular ice shelf," Prof Fricker added.
[*] Tonne:
The tonne [...] non-SI unit, symbol: t), commonly referred to as the metric ton in the United States and Canada, is a non-SI metric unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms or one megagram (symbol: Mg). It is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons (US) or 0.984 long tons (UK). Although not part of the SI, the tonne is accepted for use with SI units and prefixes by the International Committee for Weights and Measures.
The tonne is derived from the mass of one cubic metre of pure water; at 4°C one thousand litres of pure water has an absolute mass of one tonne.
[**] 1636 sq. km is approximately 630 sq. miles. By comparison, the District of Columbia is 177 sq. km (68.3 sq. miles) and Rhode Island (the smallest state in the United States) is 4,001 sq. km (1,544 sq. miles). reference
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:08AM
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