On July 12th 2017, scientists reported that a giant piece of Antarctic ice had broken free from mainland Antarctica. The trillion ton iceberg, said to be the size of Delaware, with twice the volume of Lake Eire, is a piece of the Larsen C ice shelf. The new iceberg been dubbed A68, is now floating freely with several smaller icebergs each believed to be 11 miles in length each. Scientist had been expecting this development since a huge crack opened in the Larsen C ice shelf in 2014.
Martin Siegert, professor of geosciences at Imperial College in London said, "There is enough ice in Antarctica that if it all melted, or even just flowed into the ocean, sea levels would rise by 60 meters." While this is true, he and most scientists say that A68 is not expected to raise sea levels at all. Researchers go on to say that "calving," of ice shelves on the Antarctic continent goes on all the time, and that this may or may not be due to rising earth temperatures.
No comments:
Post a Comment