• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

1 trillion ton iceberg breaks off from Larsen C Antarctic Ice Shelf

O

Oersted

Member
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.
Click to expand...

The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes (1,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes), but it was already floating before it calved away so has no immediate impact on sea level. The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever.
Click to expand...

More here

http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/

Lock if old
 
O

Oersted

Member
Mammoth Jones said:
What's calving? Doesn't sound good. RIP Earth.
Click to expand...

Ice calving, also known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier. It is a form of ice ablation or ice disruption and is normally caused by the glacier expanding. It is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, iceberg, ice front, ice shelf, or crevasse. The ice that breaks away can be classified as an iceberg, but may also be a growler, bergy bit, or a crevasse wall breakaway.


Says wiki
 
C

cameron

Member
Lengthy coverage from NYT: An Iceberg the Size of Delaware Just Broke Off a Major Antarctic Ice Shelf
A chunk of floating ice that weighs more than a trillion metric tons broke away from the Antarctic Peninsula, producing one of the largest icebergs ever recorded and providing a glimpse of how the Antarctic ice sheet might ultimately start to fall apart.
Click to expand...
Xqh7Uh0.png
Click to expand...
Bbzv1NZ.png
Click to expand...
The time-lapse image below shows the rift gradually widening from late 2014 to January of this year.
Click to expand...
WS9Ro7P.gif
 
K

KSweeley

Member
WaPo sent out a news alert this morning at 7:51 AM EDT regarding this, iceberg to be named "A68" according to WaPo:

Environment Alert Wed., Jul. 12, 2017 7:51 a.m.

One of the biggest icebergs in recorded history just broke free from Antarctica
Scientists confirmed a break at the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica on Wednesday, setting loose a massive block of ice that is over 2,200 square miles in area and weighs a trillion tons.

The iceberg is about the size of Delaware and is expected to be given the name "A68" soon, scientists said.

Read More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...term=.5e09d0f545c7&wpisrc=al_alert-hse&wpmk=1
Click to expand...
 
M

Marky Mark

Member
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
 
P

phaonaut

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

1,064,800 football fields in area, i think i did that math right
 
G

Grym

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...


http://overlapmaps.com/

Choose Lake Erie on the left. Then chose another feature or country or something you are familiar with on the right. click the arrow
 
Machine

Machine

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

Lake Erie is one of the five Great Lakes in North America (which are quite widely known). It is also the thirteenth largest lake in the world in terms of surface area.
 
J

jstripes

Banned
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

WqNL9fl.jpg
 
K

Kyzer

Banned
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

Thats like asking how many inches the mexican border is
 
WhiteWaterM00se

WhiteWaterM00se

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...


The size of a small State or very small country. But easily over a 100 miles in length.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Kyzer said:
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

Thats like asking how many inches the mexican border is
Click to expand...

Nah, you're at least using an appropriate unit of measurement. It would be more like asking what the atomic weight of the border would be.
 
NeOak

NeOak

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...
You could have Googled the answer faster than writing this rant.

Lol
 
I

iRAWRasaurus

Banned
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...
Google can help.
 
S

Skellig Gra

Member
So it was already in the ocean? I don't think I knew that detail before, for whatever reason.
Ovid said:
Relax.

Not everyone is from the United States.
Click to expand...

Not everyone is from any one country, your point is meaningless. If you care about scientific facts its not always going to be correlated to stuff you are intimately familiar with.
 
Business

Business

Member
Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

Well you should know what it is at least.

As a size reference though I understand it's quite meaningless to the general public outside of north america but this happens all the time, you are watching a documentary and they tell you something is the size of the state of Delaware... ok thanks.
 
SolVanderlyn

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Make it the 51st state. Ice Delaware.
 
C

cameron

Member
Mkuz4IC.jpg
Click to expand...
Witnessed by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on 12 July 2017, a lump of ice more than twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off the Larsen-C ice shelf, spawning one of the largest icebergs on record and changing the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. The iceberg weighs more than a million million tonnes and contains almost as much water as Lake Ontario in North America. Since the ice shelf is already floating, this giant iceberg will not affect sea level. However, because ice shelves are connected to the glaciers and ice streams on the mainland and so play an important role in ‘buttressing’ the ice as it creeps seaward, effectively slowing the flow. If large portions of an ice shelf are removed by calving, the inflow of glaciers can speed up and contribute to sea-level rise. About 10% of the Larsen C shelf has now gone.
Click to expand...
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/07/Larsen_C_breaks



Today's MODIS vs. Monday's Sentinel1 clearly shows the birth of the #LarsenC iceberg. @NASAEarth @ESA_EO @MIDASOnIce

— Stef Lhermitte‏ (@StefLhermitte) July 12, 2017​
MYJXh5A.gif
Click to expand...

The last piece of the #LarsenC breakup is nicely shown in high resolution in #Sentinel1. Farewell iceberg A68! @ESA_EO @MIDASOnIce

— Stef Lhermitte‏ (@StefLhermitte) July 12, 2017​
WH2LXJP.gif
Click to expand...
 
M

Mindlog

Member
There are only two things that can be done with that site.
Discover the supervillain using it as a fortress.
The home of the greatest rave of our time.

Wasting an iceberg like that on anything else is a crime we will all regret in twenty years.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
NPR article reigned in some of the fear of this for those who don't want to hyperventilate:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/536818782/massive-iceberg-breaks-free-in-antarctica

Luckman, however, says there's no need for panic: the break-up of the ice shelf, if it happens at all, will take years or even decades. Even then it's unclear how much ice would flow into the sea.

Nor is it clear whether climate change is behind this break-up. Although climate change has been responsible for melting in other parts of Antarctica, such as the Pine Island Glacier, researchers believe the story on the Antarctic Peninsula is more complicated. "Icebergs are calving all the time in Antarctica, and really that forms part of the natural lifecycle of any ice shelf," Hogg says.

Researchers will have to continue their studies to find out whether Larsen C is being affected by climate change.
Click to expand...

Marky Mark said:
wtf is lake erie and why is that always the benchmark used? i dont even know exactyl how big an american football field is but at least i can kind of roughly guage that when its used as a size reference. how many football fields is a trillion tonnes
Click to expand...

It's an article written for a North American audience ... I'm sure you could easily Google an article from your own news service which will provide the size in something you're more familiar with.

For instance, using my calculations, it is approximately the size of 6.846.000 European struggle sandwiches:

DAVQzid.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

NASA photographs rectangular iceberg
22
2K
LOLCats replied
Ice shelf the ice of 20 Manhattans about to break of from Antarctica
2
82
13K
Xe4 replied
Massive crack in Antarctica ice shelf grows 11 miles in only 6 days #HeyTrump
2
81
15K
Oersted replied
  • Locked
Massive Antarctic iceberg is about to break off soon
2
63
12K
NysGAF replied
  • Locked
Giant iceberg heading towards Australia
42
3K
DanteFox replied
Top Bottom