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Climate change has caused enough problems with the melting of icebergs and glaciers across Antarctica. In a new discovery by NASA, an iceberg almost twice as big as New York City is ready to break with the Antarctic ice floe.
According to NASA, a crack appeared along the Brunt Floe in October 2016 and is now spreading to the east. The crack is also known as Halloween crack and should intersect with another crack that was stable for about 3.5 decades, but is now moving northward at a lighting speed of about 2, 5 miles a year.
When the two meet, which may only happen in a few weeks, an iceberg of at least 660 square kilometers will separate.
The process, called calving, occurs naturally with the pack ice, but these changes are quite unfamiliar in this region. NASA has warned that this could lead to a destabilization of the Brunt sea ice and thus cause its complete collapse. This would further accelerate ice in upstream glaciers, which could result in an increased contribution to sea level rise.
When the other side of Halloween Crack loses ice, instability will only grow. Although this is the most important of the first ice shelf of the last 10 decades, this is not the first time such events have occurred. NASA also says that this iceberg would not even be on the list of the 20 largest icebergs in Antarctica. In addition, by July 2017, 2,200 square mile icebergs had been calved from the Larsen C ice floe. These icebergs were even larger, twice as large as the state of Delaware.
Antarctic Ice Shelves will play a major role in raising sea levels around the world. US and British scientists said last year that Antarctic ice melting was at a record high, which could pose a major threat to coastal cities. The calving of icebergs is certainly natural, but due to climate change, Antarctic ice shelves are thinning.
Ice melting has increased three times more than usual over the last five years. This will only take a back seat if measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming. By 2070, scientists estimate that melting ice in Antarctica should add more than 25 cm to the total rise in sea level.
Image credit: en.wikipedia.org
Any information extracted from here must be credited to skymetweather.com
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