A giant iceberg at the edge of Antarctica

It's twice the size of Manhattan; Concern about the effects of climate change

Two cracks converge on the Brunt ice floe on the north coast of

L & # 39; Antarctica

and soon they could create an iceberg of about twice the size of Manhattan. When that happens, it will release an ice patch of about 1,700 square kilometers, more than twice the size of the five districts of New York, making it the largest iceberg to separate from the Brunt ice floes since 19:15.

On November 20th, NASA's Earth Observatory shared images of the pack ice. In the photo, you can see a long fracture snaking from south to north and covering most of the platform. Another, called Halloween, created in October 2016, stretches from west to east along the top of the image.

The two glacial faults are at a distance of about three kilometers and could take days or even months to meet. Even if they do, the iceberg that forms in the Weddell Sea will not be the largest spawned by Antarctica. He could not even join the group of the 20 most gigantic in history.

What worries scientists is that the increase in global temperatures has accelerated the loss of ice in Antarctica and that the frozen continent has generated many important icebergs in recent years. A huge glacier detached from the Larsen C ice floe in July 2017 and an even bigger one broke the Pine Island Glacier in September of the same year. In October 2018, this glacier gave birth to another mbadive iceberg, five times larger than Manhattan. While this formation is known to regularly discharge large amounts of ice into the sea, these events are now occurring more frequently, raising concerns about how this natural process could affect the elevation of the sea level. the sea in a global warming world, Science en direct

Glaciologists have been studying these frozen platforms for over a century. It is not known if these fractures occur more frequently in this Antarctic region, said Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, a
The Washington Post. For the scientist, it would not be correct to link a single event to climate change, although it is clear that the white continent is experiencing strong changes due to this cause, but in other geographical areas.

Iceberg production is a natural and natural process that balances the net mbad of Antarctica, as each year snowfall increases the height and extent of frozen mantles.

Although it is not a mbadive iceberg, researchers fear that this process, if accelerated, could destabilize Brunt-like ice shelves and endanger some of the basics used to conduct geological and glaciological studies. Antarctic.

Depending on where the cracks meet, the stability of the entire platform could be compromised, said Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, at the Earth Observatory.