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Larsen C Calves Trillion Ton Iceberg

posted by takyon on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the breaking-bad dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:43PM (#538370)

    It cannot be shown to be directly connected to global warming.

    I have no idea where people are getting this idea that climate change cannot be linked to any evidence. That doesn't even make sense. Here is a description of two of the people studying this discussing the evidence about a link to global warming:

    And while climate change is accepted to have played a role in the wholesale disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves, Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes.

    Twila Moon, a glacier expert at the US National Ice and Snow Data Center agrees but, she said, climate change could have made the situation more likely.

    “Certainly the changes that we see on ice shelves, such as thinning because of warmer ocean waters, are the sort [of changes] that are going to make it easier for these events to happen,” she said.

    Luckman is not convinced. “It is a possibility, but recent data from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography actually show most of the shelf thickening,” he said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarctic-iceberg-breaks-free-of-larsen-c-ice-shelf [theguardian.com]