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Science News

Near-Perfect Storms Hits Antarctic Icebergs 21

Posted by michael from the Titanic dept.
Joe writes "A unique, July 20th, satellite "photo" of a near-perfect, tightly-wound, hurricane-like storm in Antarctica (now in the throes of a typical, bitterly cold, austral winter with temps sometimes ranging below -90 F., or -68 C.) can be seen here. The storm is seen in the image near two huge icebergs, B-15A and B-15B, that had calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in March as parts of one monster iceberg, B-15 (186 miles long and 23 miles wide, or 4200 square miles; it's about 2% of the entire area of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in the world). Iceberg B-15 is also the largest ever recorded in the 24-year database of icebergs maintained at the National Ice Center. (Members of the Coriolis fan club will also happily note the storm's clockwise circulation, the common characteristic of storms in the Southern Hemisphere). It should be interesting to see what effect the storm will have on the positions of these two huge icebergs. N. B., Three other huge icebergs, A-43A, A-43B, and A-44, totaling about 4000 square miles in area, calved from the Ronne Ice Shelf (second largest in the world) in May. They were not near the storm on July 20. It's not just Greenland's ice that's disappearing!" I'm afraid that I lack the background to really understand what's going on here, but a link to the "National Ice Center" was too much to pass up. Betcha didn't even know the U.S. had a National Ice Center, did you. Are these photos interesting because a) the ice cap is melting, b) these huge icebergs are going to wander into shipping lanes, c) they're just so damn big, or d) some other reason?
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Near-Perfect Storms Hits Antarctic Icebergs More

Near-Perfect Storms Hits Antarctic Icebergs

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  • where did you find that out?
  • No, the melting of floating ice doesn't change the surface level. If you fill a glass of water up, and put a big ice cube in it, mark the side at the water level, and let the cube melt, you will see that the water level doesn't change.

    Because as the ice melts it gets smaller and fits into the hole in the water it was taking up. Exactly fits. That's what it means to be floating -- you displace your wieght, and if you turn to water, then obviously you fit into the space you were displacing.

    So the whole of floating ice on the north pole (tens of feet thick at most, I believe) and the ice shelves (much thicker in places) can melt with out changing the water level.

    If the absence of the floating shelf causes more ice to slide off the land and into the ocean, then the level will go up. As soon as that ice is in the water, not when that ice melts -- just like the water in a glass rises when you put an ice cube in it.

    All this talk of ice cubes and ice bergs makes me want to play some rap.

    I think the world wouldn't loose much if the lower parts flooded anyway. Those are generally the sucky parts, take NYC for example. But of course those loosers will then start moving inland and ruining it for the rest of us.
  • Are these photos interesting because a) the ice cap is melting, b) these huge icebergs are going to wander into shipping lanes, c) they're just so damn big, or d) some other reason?

    No. It's shelf ice, not land (cap) ice. Their melting will have no effect on sea level, unlike land (icecap) ice.

    Unlikely. Not many ships go down there. Slightly fewer return. Most ships have radar now anyway.

    Yes.

    Yes. Breakup of the shelf ice is thought to be a symptom of a warming Southern Ocean.

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?

  • Dammit, I want on the mailing list! There's not enough good humour out there, these trolls are fscking hilarious though.
  • You are correct about the floating iceburgs, but is most of the ice at the south pole in the water? I do not know the numbers but I would guess a good chunk of the ice is on land, and that ice would cause some flooding.
  • So mail spiralx. His email is on his user [slashdot.org] info [microsoft.com].
  • Who's the man that actually gets to say if a storm is perfect or not?
  • Sebastian Junger
  • Icebreaker ships have made it to the north pole. These are boats mind you. Ice only gets anywhere near a mile over land. Floating ice is surprisingly thin.
  • So the whole of floating ice on the north pole (tens of feet thick at most, I believe) and the ice shelves (much thicker in places) can melt with out changing the water level.
    Try tens of miles thick. Ice can easily reach 20 feet thick on large northern lakes. I did a quick search on polar ice thickness but all I came up with was this one: http://www.thedude.com/ice_cap.htm
  • According to recent data, the Greenland icecap is melting along its edges, and thickening in the middle. Surprise, surprise.
  • I find this link [slashdot.org] works better.
  • Small lakes actually freeze easier (less movement in the water, and less volume means that it doesn't take long for the water to get below 0). You don't have to go that far north to get nice thick ice either. The little lake on my family's quarter section would normally freeze from 12' - 15' thick, and we were ~40 KM south and ~120 KM west of Edmonton.
  • In the early 1900's they laughed at Jules Verne.

    In the early 1990's they laughed at Kevin Costner.

    Now we all know the savage, post-apocalyptic, computer-generated world of Waterworld is going to come true. Excuse me, I am going to be packing away soil, as that will be the gold of the future.

  • BTW, how is it determined who gets on the mailing list? I tried once when it was first started, and I recently sent an email to spiralx with no response (I'm not even worthy of a rejection!) Am I just too much of a karma whore, or are you now very wary about who you let on the list?
  • Tens of feet thick? Artic (and antarctic) ice is more than 2000m (2 kilometers) thick (this isn't for icebergs, but ice caps on land).

    --
  • Or, you could just look at CmdrTaco or Vladinator's user info.
  • Ice gets one the order of a mile over land, such as Greenland or the South Pole. But the North Pole ice is over ocean, which is harder to freeze being salt, but more importantly it moves with currents, so ice tends to shift out to the warmer edge. Remember the pictures of nuclear submarines surfacing at the North Pole ?
  • Iirc, the center was set up to monitor shipping lanes for icebergs, and try to destroy them if possible. There's some rather funny footage of US Navy destroyers trying to shell an iceberg; they'd have done better trying to break up a mountain. I think they had to settle for tracking the bergs and forwarding the tracking data to ships.

  • If the forum is that 10gramspoppylatex thing, then I already knew about it. (forgot about it, but knew about it). I was on that mailing list, I just hadn't posted anything in a while, so I assumed I was off.
  • Most of the ice in the world is not floating in water, it is in huge (thousands of feet thick) layers that are over land, on the South Pole and on Greenland.

    My point was not that if all that ice melted the water wouldn't rise. It's just that the recent observations of huge pieces of the floating ice shelves calving off are not themselves causing the ocean level to rise. It is only if they cause something bigger, or are signs of something bigger, that the ocean level would rise.

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