Huge Iceberg Is About To Break Off From Antarctica

An iceberg one-fourth the size of Wales is about to break off of Antarctica.

Credit: Copyright MIDAS Project, A. Luckman, Swansea University

Live Science: Delaware-Size Iceberg Is About to Break Off from Antarctica

An icy thread measuring a mere 12 miles (20 kilometers) long is all that's anchoring a massive iceberg the size of Delaware to its home in West Antarctica, climate scientists report.

If the iceberg breaks away — an event known as calving — the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica will lose more than 10 percent of its area, which amounts to about 2,000 square miles (5,000 square km), according to Project MIDAS, an Antarctic research project based in the United Kingdom.

MIDAS researchers noticed the rift in 2014, and have used satellite and other data to monitor it ever since. The rift made headlines late last year when NASA's IceBridge mission snapped a photo showing the eerily immense crack, which measured 70 miles (112 km) long, more than 300 feet (91 meters) wide and about one-third of a mile (0.5 km) deep as of Nov. 10, 2016.

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CSN Editor: At its current rate, this will split within 2 years .... unless the region experiences a greater cooling trend.

Who Owns Antarctica?

CSN Editor: Its complicated.

Winter Scuttles Effort to Reach Ancient Arctic Lake

(Credit: Getty Images)

From CBS News:

In a race against the clock, Mother Nature won. A Russian team that has been toiling around the clock to pierce through to a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica is calling it quits - for now - because of harsh winter weather that's freezing their hydraulic tools.

The sub-glacial Lake Vostok is located at the bottom of a 12,000 foot-thick ice sheet in Antarctica but the project leaders reported the evacuation of its team 29.53 meters short of the final destination. They plan to resume their work next spring, when temperatures allow them to again use their drills. Lake Vostok has some of the lowest recorded temperatures found anywhere, with the thermometer going as low as -129 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Research in Antarctica Reveals Non-Organic Mechanism For Production Of Important Greenhouse Gas

UGA research scientist Vladimir Samarkin and his colleagues measured the production of nitrous oxide, an important greenhouse gas, at Don Juan Pond in Antarctica and discovered at the site a previously unreported chemical mechanism for the production of this important greenhouse gas. The discovery could help space scientists understand the meaning of similar brine pools on Mars. (Credit: The University of Georgia)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — In so many ways, Don Juan Pond in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica is one of the most unearthly places on the planet. An ankle-deep mirror between mountain peaks and rubbled moraine, the pond is an astonishing 18 times saltier than the Earth's oceans and virtually never freezes, even in temperatures of more than 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

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Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice

From Wired News/Science News:

BALTIMORE — Microbes living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane, a new study suggests.

sciencenewsIn recent years scientists have learned that liquid water lurks under much of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and so, they say, the potential microbial habitat in this watery world is huge. If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas.

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Clues To Antarctica Space Blast

Image: The team's findings could help in the search for other ancient "airbursts" .

From The BBC:

A large space rock may have exploded over Antarctica thousands of years ago, showering a large area with debris, according to new research.

The evidence comes from accumulations of tiny meteoritic particles and a layer of extraterrestrial dust found in Antarctic ice cores.

Details of the work were presented at a major science conference in Texas.

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Is Antarctica Falling Apart?

Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, like many of the fringes of the Antarctic continent, floats. That makes it fragile compared to ice on the continent, and this is where icebergs break off in a process called calving. Credit: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA

From Live Science:

Recent news of mammoth icebergs the size of small U.S. states breaking off Antarctica may sound dire. But those events mostly represent business as usual at the world's southernmost continent, scientists say.

A massive iceberg the size of the state of Rhode Island collided with Antarctica's Mertz Glacier in mid-February, and caused a huge new iceberg with an estimated mass of 860 billion metric tons to break off the glacial tongue. Scientists note that such dramatic examples have not been uncommon over the past decade.

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Giant Antarctic Iceberg Could Affect Global Ocean Circulation

Satellite image showing 97km (60 mile) long iceberg, right, about to crash into the Mertz glacier tongue, left, in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The collision created a new 78km-long iceberg. Photograph: AP

From The Guardian:

Ice broken off from Mertz glacier is size of Luxembourg and may decrease oxygen supply for marine life in the area.

An iceberg the size of Luxembourg that contains enough fresh water to supply a third of the world's population for a year has broken off in the Antarctic continent, with possible implications for global ocean circulation, scientists said today.

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Ice Shelves Disappearing On Antarctic Peninsula: Glacier Retreat And Sea Level Rise Are Possible Consequences

This image shows ice-front retreat in part of the southern Antarctic Peninsula from 1947 to 2009. USGS scientists are studying coastal and glacier change along the entire Antarctic coastline. The southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula is one area studied as part of this project, and is summarized in the USGS report, "Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947--2009" (map I--2600--C). (Credit: Image courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 22, 2010) — Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change, according to new data. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide, experts say.

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On Thick Ice: Live From An Antarctic Drilling Trip

Integrated Oceans Drilling Program Operations Superintendent Ron Grout on deck with icebergs in the background. (Photograph by Etienne Claassen, IODP/TAMU)

From Popular Mechanics:

PM's far-flung geological correspondent, Trevor Williams, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, reports from the scientific research ship JOIDES Resolution. Part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, the Wilkes Land expedition has been drilling deep into the ocean floor around Antarctica to learn how the ice sheet reacted in warmer climates of the past, which will help scientists predict how it will respond to future warming.

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Tipping Point? West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Become Unstable As World Warms

Airborne view of the Pine Island glacier, Antarctica. (Credit: NASA/Jane Peterson)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 18, 2010) — A new study examines how ice sheets, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, could become unstable as the world warms.

The team from Oxford University and Cambridge University developed a model to explore how changes in the 'grounding line' -- where an ice sheet floats free from its base of rock or sediment -- could lead to the disintegration of ice sheets and result in a significant rise in global sea level.

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Major Antarctic Glacier Is 'Past Its Tipping Point'

A catastrophic collapse is imminent, according to the latest study
(Image: NASA/Jane Peterson, NSERC)

From New Scientist:

A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.

Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.

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Antarctic Sea Water Shows ‘No Sign’ Of Warming

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From Watts Up With That?

From the Australian: SEA water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed yesterday.

Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica.

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Chilling Out In The Coldest Place on Earth

Just when you think it can't get any colder (Image: Michael Studinger/Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory/Columbia University)

From New Scientist:

VOSTOK Station in Antarctica currently holds the crown for the coldest place on the planet. It recorded -89.2 °C on 21 July 1983. But it could get even colder, with temperatures dropping to about -96 °C, if "perfect" cold-weather conditions prevail.

John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey and colleagues analysed the weather conditions that brought about the record chill and found it was caused by an unusual, near-stationary atmospheric vortex. "This isolated Vostok and prevented the waves of warm air that normally come up from the ocean," says Turner. After that big chill, the temperature bounced up by over 20 °C in one day (Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, DOI: 10.1029/2009JD012104).

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Behind The Scenes: The First Women In Antarctica

Terry Tickhill (light hat) and Eileen McSaveney (red headband) use a hand augur to drill Lake Vanda, Wright Valley, Antarctica during the 1969-1970 field season. Water collected during this effort was used to date the lake. The green tent in the background was of the same type as the field crew used for housing during their work in Wright Valley. Credit: Lois Jones

From Live Science:

In the spring of 1969, Terry Tickhill Terrell was 19 and an undergraduate chemistry major at Ohio State University, bored with her lab work and restless. She had never traveled more than 250 miles from the Barnesville, Ohio farm where she grew up.

One day, after reading an article in the school newspaper about a graduate student who had just returned from Antarctica, Terrell decided that that was where she wanted to go.

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Data To Expose 'Ghost Mountains'

A simple illustration of the Gamburtsevs inferred from new gravity data

From The BBC:

Scientists who mapped one of the most enigmatic mountain ranges on Earth have given a first glimpse of their data.

An international team spent two months in 2008/9 surveying the Gamburtsevs in Antarctica - a series of peaks totally buried under the ice cap.

The group has told a major conference in the US that the hidden mountains are more jagged than previously thought.

They are also more linear in shape than the sparse data collected in the past had suggested.

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Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images Of Remote Antarctic

After three stokes of bad luck, the group launches the unmanned aerial vehicle in mission No. 4, a 15-hour trip to Terra Nova Bay and back. Credit:Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — Unmanned planes flying over one of the most forbidding regions of Antarctica have captured the first close-up images of the area, where the cold, dense seawater that drives the ocean's circulation is formed.

These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving a boon to scientists who study the frozen regions at Earth's poles, many parts of which simply aren't reachable to humans.

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Giant iceberg heading for Australia

A satellite image released by the Australian Antarctic Division howing a giant iceberg (4th from right) which is drifting towards Western Australia Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

A giant iceberg double the size of Sydney Harbour is on a slow but steady collision course with Australia, scientists have said.

The mammoth chunk of ice, which measures 12 miles long and five miles wide, was spotted floating surprisingly close to the mainland by scientists at the Australian Antarctic Division (ADD).

Known as B17B, it is currently drifting 1,000 miles from Australia's west coast and is moving gradually north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.

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Antarctica Was Climate Refuge During Great Extinction

From New Scientist:

The cool climate of Antarctica was a refuge for animals fleeing climate change during the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, suggests a new fossil study. The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming.

Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica.

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Seas Could Rise 1.4m, Warns Antarctic Climate Review

From New Scientist:

A review of climate change in Antarctica forecasts that by 2100 the world's seas will have risen to levels previously considered too extreme to be realistic.

The review, Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment (PDF), was compiled by 100 scientists associated with the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Using 20 of the most up-to-date models that take into account the complex behaviour of the ozone hole over Antarctica, as well as the most recent observations of ice loss, the review predicts that the area of sea ice around Antarctica could shrink by 33 per cent – 2.6 million square kilometres – by 2100, leading to a sea-level rise of 1.4 metres.

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