Hey , retrieve thatgiant piece of Antarcticathat ’s been apace snap away from the continent and threatening to go unaccompanied ? Well , guess what – it ’s still not quite broken off just yet . In fact , much to the irritation of the world ’s scientific medium , theLarsen C ice shelfis being a mo of a prima donna about the whole thing .
Fortunately , for those hoping for some good ice - on - ocean natural process , another piece of Antarctica has decided to jump on the bandwagon and have young itself off . A part of Pine Island Glacier , a key constituent of the cryosphere of the south , has said its leave-taking and drifted off to melt away .
This particular glacier is a little fragile , and has been fragmentize quite dramatically since 2014 . This newly caducous piece is or so the size of it of Manhattan , which sounds huge but is basically insufferable to physically imagine . Put it this way of life – it covers roughly the same sphere as 433.2 million large - sized pizzas . Yes , the topping is irrelevant here .
Like the aforesaid diva of a chunk of ice that is yet to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula , Pine Island Glacier is actually an ice shelf , which mean it ’s already drift on the weewee – so its relief valve into the ocean does not straight chip in to ocean level advance . However , methamphetamine hydrochloride shelves confine back soil - based glacier and vast deoxyephedrine canvass , so when they go , the proverbial dam outburst .
A gorgeous timelapse of the latest calving event . ESO / NASA
Although it still takes a while – they do n’t all tumble into the sea in one elephantine cacophonic prostration – the crash of ice shelves , sometimes ( but not always ) linked to anthropogenic climate modification , indirectly contribute to sea level rise . It ’s almost never a good spate to behold , even if it does seem pretty epic .
These late images come good manners of the Operational Land Imager ( OLI ) tie to the Landsat 8 , and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS ) embellish NASA ’s Terra planet . Sometime between January 24 and January 26 , Pine Island Glacier ’s front end fell off .
Apparently , if you ’re just tuning in now , you missed the best part of the calving process , which took place in 2015 . Back then , a piece of ice 10 times the sizing of the New addition to the fleet broke away .
“ I think this event is the calving equivalent of an ‘ aftershock ’ following the much fully grown event , ” Ian Howat , a glaciologist at Ohio State University , said in astatement . “ Apparently , there are helplessness in the ice shelf – just inland of the rift that make the 2015 calving – that are result in these smaller breaks . ”
Either way , we can all concord that the Pine Island Glacier is really evince up Larsen C.
[ H / T : ESO / NASA ]
