Viewing profile — mewo2

There's a big difference between average temperatures and peak temperatures. On Larsen C, we regularly measure localised temperatures in excess of 10˚C for days at a time. That's e…

For some context on size, the calving event in this video is about 7 cubic kilometers. The Larsen C berg will be about 1000 cubic kilometers. On the other hand, this berg is overtu…

Well, it's a major news story - according to our press office, over a thousand outlets worldwide were carrying the story. So it would be weird if Business Insider didn't cover it. …

What that bit is referring to is that the ice shelf has been thinning as a result of climate change. The temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by about 3˚C (5˚F) o…

Unlikely, it's hard for these things to get close to the coast - remember that the base is several hundred meters below sea level, so it will ground if it gets into even remotely s…

I think you might need to recalibrate your idea of the scale of this object. The iceberg weighs about a trillion (10^12) tons. For comparison, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is ab…

Yeah, once these things are moving, you don't need much resolution to see them - we're talking about objects several kilometers wide, at the very least. Easily visible on even the …

We need to distinguish between sea ice (a ~1m thick layer of frozen seawater), and land ice (up to 3000m thick layer of compacted snow). Sea ice is quick to respond to climate chan…

I think there are some microorganisms in the snowpack, but other than that it's a pretty barren place, at least above the water. Below, a lot of sea life congregates around the ice…

Yes, the edges are impressive, aren't they? The ice is floating, almost flat, and has had hundreds of years to reach equilibrium, so there's practically zero vertical shear stress …

It's unlikely in this case, but it has happened in some other areas. The Brunt Ice Shelf (where the British Halley VI station is located) is largely made of reconstituted icebergs …

No, not particularly. It's already floating, so it will just drift away for the most part. Some smaller bits will probably fall off and produce some spectacular waves. By smaller b…

Well, there's not a whole lot of factual difference between "Big Thing Could Happen" and "Big Thing Probably Won't Happen", and I know which one I'd lead with if I was an editor. I…

Nothing! This is a completely natural process - ice builds up over time in the shelf and it has to be lost somehow. The calving of the iceberg is, in itself, not a result of human …

> * How long will it take for "Deleware" to melt? Potentially a very long time, although it will likely break into smaller pieces first. A lot of icebergs get caught in the Antarct…

Probably not. The Larsen B collapse was preceded by widespread surface melting across the shelf, which caused lots of crevasses to fill with water, driving them open, and the whole…

Hey folks, I'm one of the scientists on Project MIDAS (the team that made the announcement). Happy to answer questions about this. I've also been keeping a spreadsheet of things ro…