![]() “But the actual inland ice, that’s the really unknown question. “I think the ice shelf will be gone in a matter of years to decades,” Holland said. And if that goes, researchers fear nothing may stop the rest from doing the same. Even though total collapse of the glacier could take hundreds or thousands of years, the edge is falling apart much sooner. What worries scientists is that the leading edge of the huge glacier is breaking apart in many places. Two cracks on the Brunt Ice Shelf are creeping closer to each other. These edges with warm water underneath border the ocean and provide “back support” that holds the rest of the glacier in place, preventing it from falling into the sea, Holland said. This giant chunk of ice could break off Antarctica any day. The key to the future of Thwaites is the ice shelf and its tongue. A enormous iceberg bigger than Los Angeles or Greater London has separated from the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the largest to do so in more than half a century. And that’s ironic – and troublesome for researchers – because overall Antarctic sea ice is unusually low for this time of year, Larter said. Much of the problem is that loads of sea ice have gravitated around the huge iceberg. It measures about 43 miles by 28 miles, almost the size of Rhode Island, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This iceberg used to be the tongue or leading edge of Thwaites until it broke off about 20 years ago, Larter said. Thwaites is spawning more icebergs as it falls apart, Holland said. “Nobody can get to Thwaites this year,” Holland told the Associated Press on Monday. The smaller Dotson ice shelf is about 87 miles (140km) west of the Thwaites ice shelf. He is hoping that along that blinding white ice and its rugged frozen cliffs he can learn about the unseen warm ocean water nibbling away at both Dotson and Thwaites from below. A giant iceberg has calved off the front of the Amery Ice Shelf. ![]() 1 October 2019 This article is over 3 years old. It measures 1,636 square kilometres (632 square miles) in area, is 210 meters (689 feet) thick. Home > News and media > 2019 > Gigantic iceberg breaks off East Antarctica. A vast iceberg that broke off from Antarctic earlier this month could drift through the ocean for years before it breaks up and melts away, a scientist from the ESA said Friday. The Brunt Ice Shelf is the location of British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) Halley. The melting of Antarcticas ice sheet is currently responsible for 20-25 of global sea level rise. There are two primary causes of global mean sea level rise added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, and the expansion of sea water as it warms. Improvising, Holland decamped at the nearby Dotson ice shelf to do his research where no human had been before. The table iceberg, named D-28 by scientists, broke off the shelf in east Antarctica on September 26. A huge iceberg (1270 km²) the size of the county of Bedfordshire has broken off the 150-m thick Brunt Ice Shelf, almost a decade after scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) first detected growth of vast cracks in the ice. Antarcticas Effect on Sea Level Rise in Coming Centuries. David Holland, an environmental scientist at New York University, who planned to drill deep through the Thwaites ice shelf to measure the water’s warmth below it, is achingly close but not quite there.
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