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1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:52 am
by GunnyGene
That's a lot of ice! This berg broke off the Antartic in 1986 and has finally come unstuck from the ocean floor and is headed into warmer waters.
I looked it up and it's about 1500 sq. miles in area and around 3500' thick.
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/ ... ern-ocean/
Excerpt:
The world’s largest and oldest iceberg, a ‘mega-berg’ double the size of Greater London and weighing more than one trillion tonnes, has made a break for it.
After decades being grounded on the seafloor and more recently, spinning on the spot, this mega-iceberg has now broken free from its position north of the South Orkney Islands and is now drifting in the Southern Ocean.
The colossus iceberg, named A23a is twice the size of Greater London. It also weighs a whopping one trillion tonnes. It was calved from Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986 and remained grounded on the seabed of the Weddell Sea for over 30 years, before beginning its slow journey north in 2020.
It’s a journey that has been marked by a series of intriguing scientific events. For months, the iceberg was trapped in a Taylor Column, an oceanographic phenomenon in which rotating water above a seamount traps objects in place.
It was this dynamic that kept A23a spinning in one spot, delaying its expected rapid drift north.
Having now made a break for it, it’s anticipated A23a will continue its journey into the Southern Ocean following the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which scientists at the British Antarctic Survey believe will drive it towards the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Once in this region, it will encounter warmer water where it will be expected to break up into smaller icebergs and eventually melt.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 9:27 am
by rickhem
Tried looking that up on Google Maps, but either the mapping images are too old, or the resolution is being kept much more coarse in those areas. Couldn't see it.
There is a YouTube video that gives a sense of how big it is though, and it's like an island. They show a ship near it and it looks huge.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:21 am
by GunnyGene
rickhem wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 9:27 am
Tried looking that up on Google Maps, but either the mapping images are too old, or the resolution is being kept much more coarse in those areas. Couldn't see it.
There is a YouTube video that gives a sense of how big it is though, and it's like an island. They show a ship near it and it looks huge.
Antarctica is an interesting place. My father was there back in 1956 on one of trips the USS Burton Island made.
The most recent image of the area on Google Earth was in 2015, so it's way out of date.
Wiki has a extensive entry/page about the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica
Here's the wiki page about A23a, which shows the path it's taken in the last couple years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A23a
And the NASA entry about it:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/image ... -spins-out
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2024 6:05 pm
by Sir Henry
Interesting reading.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 12:46 am
by Jdl447
Proves that the Earth is still in an ice age.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 7:58 am
by GunnyGene
Jdl447 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 12:46 am
Proves that the Earth is still in an ice age.
Personally, I think drawing firm boundaries about the beginning or end of cyclic changes in the Earth that are millions of years long is more than a little foolish and arrogant, when the margin of error is plus or minus a million years or more. There's way too much uncertainty involved and it's all tangled up with plate tectonics and influences from the moon, etc. It falls in the realm of non-linear dynamical systems; aka, chaos theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 8:01 am
by HenryFan
Yeah, what GunnyGene said.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:25 am
by rickhem
GunnyGene wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:21 am
Antarctica is an interesting place.
Thanks for those links!
I find my internet surfing usually devolves into learning sessions where I follow up on some little tidbit that I knew nothing about, and just let link lead to link, until I'm better informed on whatever that subject started out from.
These will definitely be one of those learning sessions for me.
Great stuff Gene!
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:55 am
by GunnyGene
rickhem wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:25 am
GunnyGene wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:21 am
Antarctica is an interesting place.
Thanks for those links!
I find my internet surfing usually devolves into learning sessions where I follow up on some little tidbit that I knew nothing about, and just let link lead to link, until I'm better informed on whatever that subject started out from.
These will definitely be one of those learning sessions for me.
Great stuff Gene!
Glad you found it interesting.
This event demonstrates one of the major differences between the Antarctic (which is a large continent like any other, except covered in ice) and the Arctic which has no equivalent land. Arctic ice is sea ice that forms in the Arctic ocean rather than on land, so you don't see the kind of 'calving' from enormous ice sheets that are common in the Antarctic.
It's interesting that about 550 million years ago what is now Antarctica was part of a Super Continent that was much farther North, in the sub-tropical part of the planet, and was warm and forested. As continental plates began to move and spread apart, and collide, a portion of it drifted to the south polar area. And every thing (land masses and ocean floors) continues to move at varying rates (usually less than 20 centimeters/year) and in many directions - pushing up mountain ranges, and altering the global ecology/environment in fundamental ways over millions of years. It's why we find sea shell fossils in mountain ranges, and have regular volcanoes, earth quakes, etc. Earth is a never ending amusement park with great rides.
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2024 9:05 am
by clovishound
Earth is a never ending amusement park with great rides.
And no seat belts!
Re: 1 trillion ton iceberg
Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2024 2:12 pm
by GunnyGene
clovishound wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2024 9:05 am
Earth is a never ending amusement park with great rides.
And no seat belts!
Think of it like this: If the planet didn't present us with a continuous buffet of challenges, life on this rock would have never progressed beyond single cell bacteria. Enjoy the ride.