"The beginning of the end": Antarctica is divided into giant icebergs

On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 3:11 pm

A gigantic 40-square-meter, 300-meter-high cavity that grows at the bottom of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica confirms that this mbad of ice is disintegrating.

Without stopping for a second, the map of the Antarctic changes forever: huge blocks of pack ice are separated and scientists warn of the potential damage that this phenomenon can cause.

The last to be released is the Larsen C which, from the point of view of geological time, separates at a surprising speed from the pack ice. According to a study published by National Geographic, the cracks that began to separate it from the mainland were nearly 200 km long and sometimes 2000 meters wide.

When the Larsen C crack reached its final expansion, it created icebergs of about 5,000 square kilometers, 24 times the size of the city of Buenos Aires. Its size exceeded expectations with those who gave it for one of the largest ever recorded, said the Midas Project Specialists, jointly developed by professionals from Swansea and Aberystwyth Universities. .

For its part, a team led by scientists at the University of Colorado's Cooperative Environmental Science Research Institute (CIRES) in Boulder ensured the exponential growth of the meltwater lakes. For the specialist, this is a phenomenon that may have caused the collapse of the Larsen B ice sheet in 2002.

The emission of carbon dioxide is one of the main causes of the merger.

The group of experts warned that the situation of the platform could have an impact on other vulnerable ice shelves, which would break them, accelerate the release of ice into the ocean and, finally, would contribute to the overall rise in sea level. For some, it is the "beginning of the end".

Alison Banwell, a CIRES postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the new study published in Nature Communications, said her team had studied the causes of the weakening of the pack ice after badyzing the catastrophic breakup of the Larsen B pack ice.

This break was front page news in 2002, when approximately 2,000 square kilometers of ice broke up in the ocean. Scientists have noted that in previous months, the ice floe was dotted with more than 2000 meltwater lakes.

The volume of ice mbad that Antarctica loses every year at the present time has increased six-fold from what was recorded 40 years ago. (EFE)

The lakes of molten water can contain a liquid weighing between 50 000 and 2 million tons, which pushes it and creates holes. If the resulting cracks are large enough, the ice surrounding the lake basin will weaken and could begin to break, the researchers explained.

Source: https://tn.com.ar/internacional/el-principio-del-fin-la-antartida-se-divide-en-icebergs-gigantes_941749

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