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In the early 2000s they began to watch an area where large cracks were developing.īut scientists were really more interested in the area next to D-28. Scientists first began studying it in the 1960s. The Amery Ice Shelf is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory, via Wikimedia Commons.) D-28 is to the left, and Loose Tooth is on the right. In the early 2000s they began to watch an area where large cracks were developing. Professor Helen Amanda Fricker says, “It’s part of the ice shelf’s normal cycle, where we see major calving events every 60-70 years.” The Amery Ice Shelf is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica. This process, called “calving”, is a natural one. Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, the Ross Ice Shelf, is about the size of France.įrom time to time, the edges of the ice shelves break off. These are massive sections of ice that extend out over the sea, floating on the water below. The ice shelves are shown in this map in white.Īs the glaciers reach the sea, they continue to slowly push out, forming huge “ice shelves”. As the glaciers reach the sea, they continue pushing out, forming huge “ice shelves” – massive sections of ice that extend out over the sea, floating on the water below. Over time, the pressure of the ice creates glaciers (slowly moving rivers of ice), which push outward toward the sea. Most of the land in Antarctica is covered with a layer of ice and snow that’s around 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) thick on average.Īs snow falls, it piles up in the center of Antarctica in a huge layer of ice.
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These satellite images were taken by the European Space Agency before and after D-28 broke loose.Īntarctica is the world’s fifth largest continent. The iceberg, called “D-28”, has an area of about 630 square miles (1,636 square kilometers) – about twice the size of New York City. A massive iceberg split off from Antarctica last week. Sometime between September 24 and 25, a huge chunk of ice broke off of the east side of Antarctica. Though much ice is being lost in Antarctica because of climate change, this split in the ice is normal and not connected to the climate crisis. That will be valuable information to have, considering climate change is expected to accelerate ice shelf collapse, leading to more big icebergs breaking off Antarctica in the future.A massive iceberg split off from Antarctica last week. Braakmann-Folgmann also noted that A68a’s route across the Drake Passage could help researchers learn more about future icebergs and “how they influence the polar oceans.” The next step is to determine exactly what that impact looked like, Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, the lead author of the study, says.
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But the giant pulse of fresh water released by the iceberg likely still impacted the South Georgia ecosystem. While researchers initially feared that the keel of the iceberg, the part of the iceberg beneath the water’s surface, would run aground on the seafloor, blocking currents and predator foraging routes, that doesn’t appear to have happened, according to the British Antarctic Survey. Over a three-month span between 20, A68a melted rapidly as it encountered warmer water in the Drake Passage. The new study shows that the colossal iceberg did have a big effect on the local environment. As it approached the southern Atlantic island of South Georgia in December 2020, researchers became concerned that it would disrupt wildlife in the remote region. The largest iceberg in the world at the time of its formation, it initially floated around the Weddell Sea close to Antarctica before making its way its way across the Drake Passage between southern South America and the northern reaches of Antarctica. An iceberg that was once the largest on the planet, dubbed A68a, recently released 152 billion tons of fresh water close to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, potentially impacting the region’s ecosystem, a study published earlier this month found.Ī68a captured the world’s attention in 2017 when it broke off the Larsen-C ice shelf, located near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.