Huge Iceberg Poised to Break Off Antarctica & # 039; s Pine Island Glacier

Huge Iceberg Poised to Break Off Antarctica & # 039; s Pine Island Glacier

Huge Iceberg Poised to Break Off Antarctica & # 039; s Pine Island Glacier







		The satellite images show a long, steep, newly discovered crack that is breaking up on the Pine Island Glacier of West Antarctica.

		The nearly 19-mile (30-kilometer) crack began in the center of the ice shelf, where the ice shelf touches warmer ocean waters that are melting from below, said Stef Lhermitte, an assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience and Control. Remote Sensation at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

		The crack only has about another 6 miles (10 km) before one or more calves of icebergs separate from the glacier, Lhermitte said. Another similar event occurred just one year ago in 2017, when an iceberg 4.5 times larger than Manhattan broke the Pine Island Glacier.

The[[Photo gallery: glacial crevices on the Isle of Pines of Antarctica]





						


The area of ​​the next Pine Island Glacier is approximately 115 square miles (300 square kilometers).

            						    Credit: Landsat OLI images processed by Stef Lhermitte / Delft University of Technology 


		Lhermitte found the new crack by analyzing the satellite images of the glacier, which he receives every day in his email inbox. "It was Wednesday afternoon [Oct. 3] and suddenly I saw something that I did not see the day before, "he told Live Science.

		If the iceberg breaks into one piece, it will be a whopping 115 square miles (300 square kilometers), which is even larger than the one that broke last year. (The 2017 iceberg was 103 square miles, or 267 square kilometers).





				The next ~ 300 km iceberg (or its disintegrated pieces) will be the next major birthing event after iceberg B-44 last year and the sixth major birthing #PORK since 2018 [2/n] pic.twitter.com/LdJ2caJrhv

		- Stef Lhermitte (@StefLhermitte) October 4, 2018

		If the resulting iceberg is large enough, it will receive a name, Lhermitte noted. But regardless of whether the crack leads to one or many icebergs, this will be the sixth major birth event that the Pine Island Glacier has experienced since 2001, he said.

		Of course, it is natural for a glacier to defeat icebergs. But the worrying thing about the Pine Island Glacier is that it's producing icebergs more often than before, Lhermitte said. The glaciers of Pine Island created icebergs in January 2001, November 2007, December 2011, August 2015 and September 2017.





						


The red line shows where the iceberg of the Pine Island Glacier 2017 broke. The blue line shows the newly discovered crack.

            						    Credit: Landsat OLI images processed by Stef Lhermitte / Delft University of Technology 


		The next iceberg is not yet loose, "but the fact that the crack is almost across the entire glacier, could happen relatively soon," said Lhermitte.

		It is challenging, however, to say what "soon" means. According to Lhermitte, the birthing event will probably occur in a matter of weeks or months, "but it probably will not take years," he said. "I hope this happens from now on during this Antarctic summer."

		Once the break occurs, the iceberg is likely to remain frozen if it hangs with sea ice in Antarctica. But if the ocean currents carry it northward, the iceberg will melt in the warmer waters, Lhermitte said.

		The Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest flowing glaciers in Antarctica. Each year, it loses 45 trillion tons (40.8 trillion metric tons) of ice, which in turn causes sea levels to increase 0.03 inches (1 millimeter) every eight years, The Washington Post reported last year. Sea levels would rise 1.7 feet (0.5 m) if the entire glacier melted.

		This video, which runs from 2002 to 2016, shows how much ice the Pine Island Glacier is losing. (In the video, the colors yellow, orange, red and black represent the loss of ice, while blue indicates the gain of ice).



		Ice shelves are important because, like dirt clogging a sink that slows water drainage, they prevent the glacier from flowing full force into the ocean, Lhermitte said. Once the next birthing event occurs, the Pine Island Glacier will have retreated almost 4 miles (6 km), Lhermitte he wrote on Twitter.

		As for why the Pine Island glacier is losing more of its ice shelf (the icy portion that does not touch the rock, but extends over the ocean), it's hard to say. The hot water that is melting the ice sheet from below was pushed from the depths of the ocean, said Lhermitte.

		"The reason we get this surge of hot water is certainly related to climate, but it is very difficult to say if this is related to climate change," he said. "Antarctica is a very sensitive continent for climate change, but for this individual iceberg, this is impossible to infer."



	Originally published in Living science.

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