July 12, 2017
A one trillion tonne iceberg (click here) – one of the biggest ever recorded - has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes....
...The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes (1,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes), but it was already floating before it calved away so has no immediate impact on sea level. The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever....
1 metric tonne of water = 264.17 US gallons of water. That is a lot of water volume to the oceans as well as additional weight. Water is heavy. Water weighs about 8.4 pounds per gallon.
By Chris Morris
While scientists (click here) examine the environmental impacts of the massive iceberg that has broken off of Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf, the shipping world is keeping its eye on the potential financial impact.
Should the 1 trillion ton iceberg, which is larger than Delaware and more than twice the size of Rhode Island, begin to migrate, it could be a substantial disruption to transportation. The Drake Passage, a gap between Cape Horn at the bottom of South America and Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands, is one of the world's busiest international shipping lanes.
And scientists say they're not sure what the iceberg will do, now that it has calved (science-speak for separation).
"The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict," said Professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University, lead investigator of the MIDAS project. "It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters."...
