Climate change did not unleash giant Antarctic iceberg, scientists say - The Washington Post

Satellite imagery captured the break, which occurred astir 10 years aft outer monitoring detected maturation successful a antecedently dormant ace successful the crystal known arsenic Chasm-1, and astir 2 years aft a slightly smaller iceberg named A74 separated from the aforesaid crystal shelf. A chasm is simply a ace successful the crystal support that extends each the mode from the aboveground to the water underneath, portion an crystal support is simply a floating portion of crystal that extends from glaciers formed connected land.

Ted Scambos, a elder probe idiosyncratic astatine the University of Colorado astatine Boulder, wrote successful an email that portion the iceberg “is a immense wide of ice, astir 500 cardinal tons … it is acold from being the largest iceberg ever seen, which rivaled Long Island.”

The calving lawsuit is not expected to impact the BAS’s Halley Research Station, which was relocated further inland successful 2016 arsenic a precaution aft Chasm-1 began to grow.

However, “the caller fracture puts the basal wrong astir 10 miles of the ocean, and caller cracking could hap implicit the adjacent fewer years, forcing different costly determination of the station,” Scambos wrote. The caller iceberg is expected to travel a akin way to that of A74 into the Weddell Sea and volition beryllium named by the U.S. National Ice Center.

Unlike immoderate erstwhile icebergs and collapsed crystal shelves that person been linked to clime change, the BAS property merchandise said the interruption is simply a “natural process” and determination is “no grounds that clime alteration has played a important role.”

Rather, the chasm started to turn owed to “stresses gathering up … due to the fact that of the earthy maturation of the crystal shelf,” said Hilmar Gudmundsson, a glaciology researcher astatine Northumbria University, successful a 2019 BBC story.

Scambos compares the calving of the iceberg to a chisel connected a committee of wood. “In this lawsuit the chisel was a tiny land called ‘MacDonald Ice Rise,’” Scambos wrote. “The crystal was driven against this rocky seamount by crystal flow, forcing it to divided and yet interruption disconnected the floating crystal shelf.”

“These ample iceberg calvings, sometimes arsenic ample arsenic a tiny state, are spectacular. But they’re conscionable portion of however Antarctica’s crystal expanse works,” Scambos said. “Most of the clip they person thing to bash with clime change.”