Birth of huge iceberg in Antarctica

05.11.2011 [12:54]
Print
A⁺ A^-

Baku, November 5 (AZERTAC). A huge, emerging crack has been discovered in one of Antarctica`s glaciers, with a NASA plane mission providing the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg breakup in progress.

NASA`s Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth`s polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. The glaciers of the Antarctic, and Greenland, Ice Sheets, commonly birth icebergs that break off from the main ice streams where they flow in to the sea, a process called calving.

The crack was found in Pine Island Glacier, which last calved a significant iceberg in 2001; some scientists have speculated recently that it was primed to calve again. But until an Oct. 14 IceBridge flight, no one had seen any evidence of the ice shelf beginning to break apart. Since then, a more detailed look back at satellite imagery seems to show the first signs of the crack in early October.

Birth of huge iceberg in Antarctica

FEEDBACK

Other news in this section