The rift in the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica has grown by 17km in the last few days and is now only 13km from the ice front, indicating that calving of an iceberg is probably very close, Swansea University researchers revealed after studying the latest satellite data.
The rift in Larsen C is likely to lead to one of the largest icebergs ever recorded. It is being monitored by researchers from the UK's Project Midas, led by Swansea University.
Professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University College of Science, head of Project Midas, described the latest findings:
"In the largest jump since January, the rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown an additional 17 km (11 miles) between May 25 and May 31 2017. This has moved the rift tip to within 13 km (8 miles) of breaking all the way through to the ice front, producing one of the largest ever recorded icebergs.
The rift tip appears also to have turned significantly towards the ice front, indicating that the time of calving is probably very close.
The rift has now fully breached the zone of soft 'suture' ice originating at the Cole Peninsula and there appears to be very little to prevent the iceberg from breaking away completely."
Researchers say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.
Larsen C is approximately 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.
Professor Luckman added, "When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10% of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula.
We have previously shown that the new configuration will be less stable than it was prior to the rift, and that Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event.
The MIDAS Project will continue to monitor the development of the rift and assess its ongoing impact on the ice shelf. Further updates will be available on our blog (projectmidas.org),and on our Twitter feed"
The team say they have no evidence to link the growth of this rift, and the eventual calving, to climate change. However, it is widely accepted that warming ocean and atmospheric temperatures have been a factor in earlier disintegrations of ice shelves elsewhere on the Antarctic Peninsula, most notably Larsen A (1995) and Larsen B (2002).
They point out that this is one of the fastest warming places on Earth, a feature which will certainly not have hindered the development of the rift in Larsen C.
-- submitted from IRC
Related Stories
A one trillion tonne iceberg – one of the biggest ever recorded - has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes.
http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/
Also at BBC, PBS, The Guardian, and The Verge.
Complete Calving Coverage:
Antarctic Larsen C Ice Shelf to Calve; Halley VI Research Station Plans Move
Antarctic Ice Rift Close to Calving, After Growing 17km in 6 Days
Delaware-Sized Iceberg Could Break Off of Antarctica at Any Moment
Larsen C Rift Branches as it Comes Within 5 km of Calving
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:36PM (3 children)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:56PM
... because I have a functioning brain that can fabricate decent definitions based on the context.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:50PM
This is proof that fully grown ice berg... cows... are healthily reproducing on schedule. No global warming happening at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday June 08 2017, @06:58PM
Ignore the butthead :) It's always appreciated when submitters put links into articles, and commenters making informative links are always welcome.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:48PM
Calling
DannyBrealDonaldTrump!(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:18PM (8 children)
What a strange thing to say. How could it not be related? Literally everything that happens on Earth is linked to the climate (almost by definition) except this event?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:22PM
I mean here is a partial list of things related to climate change: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html [whatreallyhappened.com]
Now that Trump is US president are we going to get endless news stories about how this or that is not related to climate change?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:47PM (4 children)
The thing that worries me is that it is winter in Antarctica. It has been getting colder for the last few months, and yet this rift is still growing.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:11PM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:55PM
If its thawing and re-freezing, that would add stress too. Since water that refreezes in the crevice would have to expand.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:13AM
That does seem likely. As well as stress from tides, there will be some pretty fierce storms at this time of the year on the Antarctic Peninsula you would imagine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:46AM
The rift is not the ice thawing, but breaking in two. It has simply become too big to hold together - the part breaking off is resting on water, which does not provide a stable foundation.
While the strength of the ice may be related to temperature, that only influences how large an iceberg[1] can become before breaking off - and this one is huge.
[1] Well, technically it's not an iceberg until it breaks off.
(Score: 2) by julian on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:29AM (1 child)
Climate change definitely causes this to happen more, but we can't know if any particular calving was caused by climate change or would have happened regardless even if humans were out of the equation. It's like how there will be more and stronger hurricanes due to climate change, but hurricanes existed long before humans did so you can't say for certain if any particular hurricane today could have been prevented.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:55AM
Current scientific estimates are that there will be fewer but stronger hurricanes. It's difficult to predict, so that may or may not come to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:21PM (3 children)
Move along, move along.
Back to the coal mines! Murrica!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:36PM (2 children)
Screw coal mines, let's get back to burning wood and dried cow patties. That's progress!
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:43PM (1 child)
Wood would be a step forward from coal, it's renewable after all, and can be burned relatively cleanly.
(Score: 4, Funny) by edIII on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:27AM
Well, we could burn politicians for warmth, but I doubt they would burn cleanly.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:54PM (3 children)
Obligatory sci-fi clip.. dude, run! [youtube.com]
Makes me wonder if this means that the global weather system is in for serious disruption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:19PM (2 children)
Global weather has already gotten a bit wonky and now we're on the brink of losing Earth's biggest heatsink. Shit is gonna go sideways, I hope we can cope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:39PM (1 child)
Just make sure you learn to swim and you'll be like the 1 eyed man in the world of the blind. It'll be a 1 eyed man's paradise!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:27PM
This isn't the bible buddy.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:09PM (6 children)
The problem of explaining the catastrophic changes that is going to happen in simple terms...
In simple terms when ice in a glass of water melts the water level does not rise it even goes down a bit because ice contract when melting.
Then why are we worried with global warming...it is the planet is a complex system of sea currents, atmospheric currents, micro and macro climate and the biosphere etc...and disrupting this balance cannot be predicted in simple terms.
People who modelled the planet in simulation are going to have a better idea of what's going to happen than people who have watched a glass of water with ice melting...but tell that to the glass of water experts...they are the one advising the gubermint these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:56PM (1 child)
10% of land has glacier ice. Antarctica and Greenland etc.
Estimates if it all melted is 70m rise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:38AM
Hmm, that's 230 feet in Murcan. My lawn is about 750 feet above sea level. I won't have to worry about moving, but I think I'm going to have to get used to telling masses of refugees to get off my lawn.
I'm not worried, though. Lots of ACs here have given me plenty of witty one-liners to use against refugees in addition to the usual ways of telling somebody with a higher UID to get off one's lawn. I'm certain that once they see I've trained in the ways of telling refugees what to do with themselves here on SN, they'll have no choice but to walk back to where they came from and quietly drown.
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:06AM (3 children)
I don't know how you could be that wrong, but you are. If you believe the simple terms crap.
Google has a map where you can see sea level rise and what happens. Not all of the ice is in the water, as the other poster said. This is decided science already, where it is even more ludicrous to be a denier. The amount of ice has been calculated, the amount of water has been calculated, and basically, we have math and science telling us these things. Any arguments about ice cubes in a glass of water are fucking hilarious. I have the response argument; Pop a waterbed on the 2nd floor of an apartment building, and the apartment below will get all the water.
Even if the water level didn't rise, you could massively fuck up the ocean currents with the release of the water from land which can shut down the ocean conveyor belts [noaa.gov]. That is a relatively simple system driven on temperature and salinity. We very much can model it, understand it, and predict what will happen. Permanent disruption is of course not possible, but there will be trillions in damages in the short term while the "system balances out". The conveyor belt is related to seasonal phenomena like El Nino and La Nina, and those two are already blamed for billions upon billions in damages.
It's really not mysterious. We may not be able to accurately predict the weather, but we can sure as fuck predict ocean conveyor belt shutdown if Greenland lost all of their ice. Not to mention a significant sea level rise of 6.5-7 meters [usgs.gov] that would devastate certain cities and states in the U.S. You can kiss the Everglades good bye, kiss portions of New York good bye, say good bye to New Orleans, .etc. That's just Greenland. Antarctic Ice sheets exists too, and that puts it in catastrophic terms. THAT will kill Manhattan and flood Central Park. Large parts of the world will be under water, specifically the coastal areas where most of the populations, ports, and wealth are.
Yeah, ice cubes in a glass :D LOL
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Touché) by dwilson on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:06AM
I think you should re-read the message you replied to a bit more carefully.
- D
(Score: 2) by tizan on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
Nope i donot believe in the simple thing... i was quoting a "reasonable" person that did not believe that global warming will have the predicted effect when she told me look at a glass of water and ice melting !
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday June 08 2017, @06:48PM
Heh. Sometimes I can't tell anymore :)
You can have the most intelligent, reasonable, and nice people completely lose their minds when it comes to this stuff (for political and money reasons) and everything turns into Magic, God's Will, or the explanations for 4 years olds to explain why science is simply being hysterical and leftist.
While you were being funny, a Senator brings in a snowball into Congress like it's a rational and scientific argument for his fellow
thievescolleagues.Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by Skwearl on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:52AM (1 child)
sooo....we have the world's biggest iceberg....lets put some motors on it, drive it to the middle east or cali and sell the water.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:06AM
Dubai already has plans. Seriously.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:55AM (2 children)
As they say, anecdotes are not data. Despite all climate doomsaying, sea level acceleration has not been detected. [nature.com] Who cares about this kind of regular event, unless you're a researcher who studies ice? Now we're all experts who can gauge the significance of this? Paging Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:57PM
The experts said it was unrelated to climate change (see summary), but the journalist and all commentators disagree apparently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:33PM
Exactly! So let's repeat this experiment on at least 10,000 Earths first, and determine a baseline incidence rate before we jump to any conclusions!