NASA's DC-8 flew over the Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf on Oct. 14, 2011. (NASA/GSFC)
Posted on 11/02/2011 7:37:47 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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 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 c, 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.
"We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it's very exciting for us," said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's part of a natural process, but it’s pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens."
Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along Antarctica's Hudson Mountains toward the Amundsen Sea. A floating tongue of ice reaches out 30 miles (48 kilometers) into the Amundsen beyond the grounding line, the below-sea-level point where the ice shelf locks onto the continental bedrock. As ice pushes toward the sea from the interior, inevitably the ice shelf will crack and send a large iceberg free. ..
Pine Island Glacier is of particular interest to scientists because it is big and unstable ..
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
NASA's DC-8 flew over the Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf on Oct. 14, 2011. (NASA/GSFC)
Surely..this fainally...must be Bush’s Fault......
Surely..this finally...must be Bush’s Fault......
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
She blinded me with science!
AL Gore pick up he white phone.
ice is ALWAYS moving...
Big frigid crack alert.
cracks are interesting.
HELP!
WE’RE ALL GONN’A DIE NEXT YEAR FROM MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING
HELP!
WE’RE ALL GONN’A DIE NEXT YEAR FROM MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING
Good , now we can make more Iceberg Vodka
Caption; Heroic children save first lady from being pulled
over by massive butt.
Attention, Clive Cussler fans.
Too many dancing penguins. We'll have to turn them Baptists to get them to stop.
Well, now we know where Michael the Hutt Moore has been hiding.
Thanks NormsRevenge.
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