I’m running out of ideas to talk about so I’m going to add another topic to the list of things I blog about. This new topic will be about weather and environment.
I came across an interesting article earlier that was talking about Antarctica. It said that NASA found a huge crack in Antarctica that could break off an iceberg large enough to cover New York City. This iceberg can potentially break off within the new few months.
The rift is said to be about 820 feet at its widest and 260 feet as an average width. The crack is about 18 miles long and its width grows about 2 meters every day. Not only is it its length and width shocking but it was also measured between 165 and 195 feet deep. The glacier that could break off is expected to be about 340 square miles. The general time frame for it to break off: the ending of this year or early next.
The NASA researchers do say, however, that an iceberg breaking off is a natural occurring process. They said that Pine Island breaks off an iceberg about every 10 years and the last one was in 2001.
It’s not so much that the iceberg separating is the important idea, but rather that the glacier producing the iceberg is thinning; although the area that is thinning also appears to be growing. This thinning could lead to the disappearance of this glacier within 100 years.
The effects of this glacier melting would be a possible trigger to the entire collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which would make global sea levels rise anywhere from 3 to 5 feet.
To see the actual report of this occurrence and the pictures and videos included, visit the link below.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/antarctica-about-to-calve-giant-iceberg-111104.html
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