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OUT OF THIS WORLD | The Earth, space and everything in between – a daily journey through the weather, space and science with meteorologist / science writer Scott Sutherland
Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist / Scientific Editor
Thursday, November 1, 2018, 9:18 pm – The world's fastest shrinking glacier has just lost another mbadive piece this week, while an iceberg about five times larger than Manhattan has detached and flew away.
Scientists have closely monitored the Pine Island Glacier.
Not only does this glacier, located along the coast of West Antarctic, diminish faster than any other known glacier, so it contributes more to the rise in sea level than any other glacier in the world. .
This week, another mbadive block has been spotted clearing the edge of the glacier's attack. Measured at about 300 square kilometers, it is about five times the size of the island of Manhattan.
Stef Lhermitte, a remote sensing scientist from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has published images of this new iceberg, nicknamed B-46, which disappeared at the end of October.
This sequence of images, taken by ESA's Sentinel 1 satellite in late September and during the month of October, shows the rapid spread of a large crack on the glacier and then the new iceberg coming off in the last few days. October. Since the breaking of the iceberg of 300 km2, it has split into several pieces. The most important thing, which Lhermitte estimates at about 226 km2, is now called B-46.
According to other Lhermitte articles, while the glacier's attacking edge was going through many small retreats and advances under the control of scientists between 1972 and 2000, he then began a series of much larger changes , with a large calving event every six years or so (2001, 2007 and 2013), followed by three major calving events in the last five years alone (2015, 2017 and 2018). The most important among them, according to the British project iSTAR, was an iceberg of 720 square kilometers, calved in 2013.
This increase in the calving rate is a source of major concern for scientists studying Antarctica, particularly in the context of studying the Antarctic response of the West. global warming and climate change.
The Pine Island Glacier not only loses ice from its attacking edge during these calving events, but, according to the iSTAR project, the 2km thick glacier also thinned out About 1 meter per year, as well as its anchor line, the starting point of the glacier. float on the water – retreats one kilometer per year inland.
All these factors bear witness to the increasing instability of this glacier and, according to what Sentinel 1 cameras show us, it does not seem to be too long to wait for the next calving.
This activity that we observe with the Pine Island Glacier and Larsen-C ice trays along the Antarctic Peninsula highlights the impact of global warming on Antarctica, where the warm waters of the ocean seem to have the most great impact. , sifting the stability of these glaciers and ice trays from below.
sources: Stef Lhermitte | ISTAR project |
RELATED: BIZARRE, PERFECTLY RECTANGULAR ICEBERG HAS, ALSO, A REALLY SIMPLE EXPLANATION
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