![]() ![]() It's that ice that would raise sea levels, NASA scientist Thomas P. However, once that iceberg breaks off, land ice that had been blocked by the berg would plop into the sea. If a chunk of ice that big did drop into the sea, it would raise sea levels about one-sixteenth of an inch, he said. If the iceberg did break off, it wouldn't contribute to sea level rise since it's already floating, said Ted Scambos, a scientist with the data center. Most of the world's ice shelves hug the coast of Antarctica. The Larsen C shelf is on the Antarctic Peninsula, the portion of the continent that juts out toward South America. Ice shelves are permanent floating sheets of ice that connect to a landmass, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Once the crack goes all the way across, it could produce an iceberg the size of Delaware. The crack in the Larsen C Ice Shelf is more than 300 feet wide and about a third of mile deep, according to the agency. NASA is keeping a close eye on a 70-mile-long rift in an Antarctica ice shelf that could produce a massive iceberg and indirectly lead to rising sea levels. The best way to mitigate these losses is to rapidly decarbonise and limit global heating.Watch Video: An iceberg the size of Delaware is dangerously close to breaking off Glaciers in the Himalayas could disappear by as early as 2035. Switzerland’s 1,400 glaciers have shrunk by more than half in the last 85 years, while Arctic sea ice has decreased by about 40 per cent since 1978. The melt problem is evident all over the world. Meltwater from these sheets is responsible for about one-third of the global average rise in sea level since 1993. Greenland is melting at around 280 billion tons per year. This breakage isn’t linked to climate change - but it’s the exception, not the rule.Īs temperatures increase, Antarctica is losing ice mass at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year. If they hadn’t done so, it would currently be floating out to sea on the new iceberg. The British Antarctic Survey recently moved their station inland. The reason it's important, it's a very large calving event for Antarctica.” "So it's not linked to any changes in atmospheric or ocean temperatures. It's well below freezing there,” he explains. "Some of the ice shelves that are broken up in more northerly locations are the result of climate change. Perhaps surprisingly, the event is not linked to climate change, Hogson says. “This one has been doing that for a number of years now.” So they do periodically extend out to sea and then break off. “The ice shelves around Antarctica are extensions, floating extensions, of the Antarctic ice sheet. Such cracks are common around the edges of Antarctica, explains Professor Dominic Hodgson, a glaciologist for the British Antarctic Survey. The Chasm-1 crack has been forming for a few years - as evidenced by striking footage from 2019. Why has this massive iceberg broken off Antarctica? It will be named later by the US National Ice Center. The icy mass is likely to drift into the Weddell Sea. The new berg is the second iceberg to break off in two years, as a massive crack called ‘Chasm-1’ extends through the Brunt ice shelf. The good news is that the split is a natural process known as ‘calving,’ and is not linked to climate change, the British Antarctic Survey say. The huge iceberg, which measures more than 1,550 square kilometers, broke away from the 150-meter-thick Brunt Ice Shelf on Sunday. LONDON - A vast iceberg equivalent to the size of Greater London has broken off the Antarctic ice shelf. ![]()
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