A
gigantic iceberg has broken off from the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. The
iceberg, named D-28, is over 600 square miles in area, which is bigger
than the city of Los Angeles. It's equal to about 27 Manhattan
Islands. The berg separated from the ice shelf last week, on Sept. 26,
next to another wobbly chunk of ice called the “Loose Tooth," because
it appeared to be precariously attached.
“We first noticed a rift at the front of the ice shelf in the early 2000s and predicted a large iceberg would break off between 2010-15,” said Scripps’ Institute of Oceanography professor Helen Amanda Fricker in a statement released by the Australian Arctic Division. “I am excited to see this calving event after all these years," she said. "We knew it would happen eventually, but just to keep us all on our toes, it is not exactly where we expected it to be.”
The
last major calving event on the Amery was in 1963-64.
“We don’t think this event is linked to climate change. It’s part of the ice shelf’s normal cycle, where we see major calving events every 60-70 years,” Fricker added.
Ben
Galton-Fenzi, a glaciologist with the Australian Antarctic Program, said
scientists picked up last week’s calving event by looking at satellite imagery.
“The calving will not directly affect sea level because the ice shelf was already floating, much like an ice cube in a glass of water,” Galton-Fenzi said. “But what will be interesting to see is how the loss of this ice will influence the ocean melting under the remaining ice shelf and the speed at which the ice flows off the continent.”
The
new iceberg – which is about 689 feet thick and weighs some 315 billion tons –
will now be tracked because it poses a potential hazard for shipping, CNN
said. It's likely to take several years for it to break apart and melt
completely, the BBC reported.
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