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Old July 12th, 2017 #1
James Heimdal
Purveyor of Truth
 
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Dixie
Posts: 218
Default Giant Antarctic iceberg breaks free of Larsen C ice shelf

Quote:
12 July 2017 - A giant iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off an ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea.

Reported to be “hanging by a thread” last month, the iceberg was found to have split off from the Larsen C section of the Larsen ice shelf on Wednesday morning after scientists examined the latest satellite data from the area.

The Larsen C ice shelf is now 10% smaller than before the iceberg broke off – or “calved” – an event that researchers say has changed the shape of the Antarctic peninsula.

At 5,800 sq km the new iceberg is half as big as the record-holding iceberg B-15 which split off from the Ross ice shelf in the year 2000, but it is nonetheless believed to be among the 10 largest icebergs ever recorded.

“It is a really major event in terms of the size of the ice tablet that we’ve got now drifting away,” said Anna Hogg, an expert in satellite observations of glaciers from the University of Leeds.

The huge crack that spawned the new iceberg grew over a period of years, but between 25 May and 31 May alone, the rift grew by 17km – the largest increase since January. Between the 24 June and 27 June the movement of the ice sped up, reaching a rate of more than 10 metres per day for the already-severed section.

But in the end it wasn’t a simple break – data collected just days before the iceberg calved revealed that the rift had branched multiple times, meaning that several small icebergs... More
Graphic



A massive rift in the Larsen C ice shelf on November 10, 2016