A tabular iceberg gets stuck in thin, seasonal sea ice.
I think I mentioned the ice shelf soon to have a large piece of it break off. It is from the Brunt Ice Shelf and it is enormous (click here).
There is now a new concern and it from dedicated scientists in Antarctica. This article was written a few months ago.
October 17, 2018
By Katherine Ellen Foley
What started as a quest (click here) to watch the activity of the largest ice shelf in Antarctica turned into one to hear it instead.
On Tuesday (Oct. 16), researchers led by a team at Colorado State University published a letter describing an accidental discovery (paywall) on the Ross Ice Shelf: while using sensitive seismometers to study the ground below the huge ice shelf (about the size of Spain), they found they could also pick up a sound frequency emitted by the snow as it vibrated due to wind and melting activity.
“We discovered that the shelf nearly continuously sings at frequencies of five or more cycles per second,” the researchers write (emphasis theirs). Although these frequencies are too low for humans to hear naturally, when the sounds are sped up, they sound like the warbly, ominous introduction of a monster in a horror movie....
...Toward the end of the two-year time period, the team noticed a drop in pitch of the sounds, corresponding with a warm spell, in which some of the snow melted. Afterward, the pitch remained lower, suggesting that damage from these warmer spells can be long-lasting. The team believes monitoring vibrations could provide a real-time look at ice-shelf activity to help predict if it’s on the verge of calving. Historically, scientists have had difficulty predicting when icebergs will break from their shelves.
“Melting of the firn is broadly considered one of the most important factors in the destabilization of an ice shelf, which then accelerates the streaming of ice into the ocean from abutting ice sheets,” Chaput told Earther. Monitoring the firn’s melt-rate acoustically could be a way to (literally) alarm scientists when the shelf may be becoming unstable....
The study from Colorado State University discovered the sounds of cold in Antarctica. It only makes sense such dynamics exist. Do ice cubes in a glass not crack and creak when something to drink is poured over them? So, when it comes to huge amounts of frozen water aged over time, there is going to be sound when the effects of wind and snow act on them.
The Colorado study is separate and independent of the study below out of Corvallis, Oregon. Basically, one validates the other.
Now, to bring the brevity of this to hit home realize this is not WAIS (West Antarctica Ice Sheet) anymore, this is opposite side Antarctica. Up to now, the primary concerns of huge icebergs and disappearing ice shelves has been in regard to the Peninsual of the Weddell Sea. These studies are discussing rapidly changing conditions in regard to the Ross Ice Shelf of the Ross Sea. There has been no serious concerns about the Ross Sea Ice Shelf, but, it is obvious there are significant changes that have been occurring and continue to occur.
By Nala Rogers
(Inside Science) — Most of the worry over melting ice in Antarctica (click here) has focused on the rapidly melting western shore, where there is enough ice to raise worldwide sea levels by up to 4.3 feet. But new research suggests that the massive Ross Ice Shelf, which has long been considered stable, might be at risk as well — potentially leading to a slower sea level rise of up to 38 feet as glaciers that were once held back by the shelf slide more quickly into the ocean. The researchers suspect that other crucial ice shelves could also be at risk.
“My primary concerns would be that the potential for melting and collapse of the big ice shelves is not being taken seriously enough,” said Laurie Padman, a physical oceanographer based in Corvallis, Oregon who works at a Seattle-based nonprofit called Earth and Space Research. “They’re being treated as less important because they are not presently showing much signs of change. But on a 100-year timescale, they have the potential for large changes.”...
