New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica

[Tab]

Source: Reuters

ROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) – An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.

"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.

Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.
...
The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.
...
The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick would take at least hundreds of years to form.
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Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice.

Read more: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=102

[Skink]

1. Cool.

[Peregrine Took]

2. ??????????????????

[slackmaster]

15. Ice Bongs for everyone

:nuke:

[KoKo]

3. Well...we should feel the impact of that big one somewhere down the road...

Amazing..how fast.

[pscot]

5. Faster than expected

A genuine surprise, in fact.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

4. A serious question- why aren't we harvesting this ice?

Ice = FRESH WATER. I know it would be somewhat of an effort, but would it really be so prohibitive to tug some of that ice to a place where the fresh melt could be siphoned, purified, and USED???

I'm asking this in the spirit of making a real world effort to turn some lemons into a whole lotta lemonade, so to speak...

:shrug:

[joshcryer]

12. One word, energy. It costs a lot of energy to move that much ice, and the sun does that just fine...

...on its own. Rain and such.

We actually used to get our ice from iceburgs in the early mid-late 1800s early 1900s. It was shipped in from Canada. Was quite the specticle and employeed tens of thousands.

[wordpix]

14. also used to get ice from lakes and ponds, shipped out on trains

Very large industry until electric refrigeration replaced the old ice box.

[Baby Snooks]

6. It will not affect sea level rise...

There is no change in volume so the icebergs won't affect sea level rise but what they will affect as they melt in warmer waters is the salt water ocean currents and no one really knows what the effect of an infusion of fresh water will be although they expect a change in weather patterns - and not pleasant changes. Some believe they may already be affecting the weather patterns in Australia.

The real danger are the massive glaciers behind these ice sheets. They will add volume and will affect sea level rise and the indications are that despite it not happening yet, they will begin to slide towards the ocean as well.

We really are past the point of no return. We might have been able to stop some of it 25 years ago. The reality is 25 years later it is simply too late.

[Tab]

8. The other real danger is the protection against global warming these shelves afford

White reflects sunlight. Keeps the place cool. Every time a shelf breaks off and disintegrates, we lose protection.

Dark absorbs heat and sunlight. So as we lose ice from the poles, the ocean there gets darker and thus warmer, and that accelerates the melting process, causing more shelves to disintegrate more quickly, creating a nasty chain of events. Pretty soon, and we are probably there already, we reach a point of no return beyond which we can't stop the process, and we rapidly lose ice at an incresingly faster pace.

Although this is at the south pole (the Antarctic), already on the other end of the earth, the arctic has progressed to the point that we're nearly able to use it as a full-time shipping lane - pretty soon, year round. Already countries are starting to fight over rights to the shipping - previous never an issue - not to mention the natural resources up there.

[KoKo]

9. Amazing times we live in...on the cusp of so much change..

And, who really can accurately predict how it will all turn out...given the human factor along with the science.

[Faygo Kid]

7. Just a start.

We will see much worse, and soon.

[glinda]

10. When the permafrost started to melt that was it for us people. There is no going back.

Only a miracle in science will save us and the animals and plants.

[high density]

11. I hope AF1 doesn't do a flyby and scare whoever's on that ice. NM

[GinaMaria]

13. Do you have a link?

The one in you OP links to DU LBN posting rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Link here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE53R27V20090428