“This seems to be a collapse rather than normal behaviour. “Ice shelves lose mass as part of their natural behaviour – but the large-scale collapse of an ice shelf is a very unusual event,” Mackintosh said. Satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission showed that movement of the ice shelf began between 5 and 7 March, Neff said. “This collapse, especially if tied to the extreme heat brought by the mid-March atmospheric river event, will drive additional research into these processes in the region.” “Current understanding largely suggests you can’t get the same rapid rates of ice loss due to the geometry of the ice and bedrock there.” “We still treat East Antarctica like this massive, high, dry, cold and immovable ice cube,” he said. Peter Neff, a glaciologist and assistant research professor at the University of Minnesota, said that to see even a small ice shelf collapse in East Antarctica was a surprise. By 4 March this year, the ice shelf appeared to have lost more than half its surface area compared to January measurements of around 1,200 sq km. The Conger ice shelf had been shrinking since the mid-2000s, but only gradually until the beginning of 2020, Walker said. “It won’t have huge effects, most likely, but it’s a sign of what might be coming,” Walker said. Without them, inland ice flows faster into the ocean, resulting in sea level rise.ĭr Catherine Colello Walker, an earth and planetary scientist at Nasa and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said though the Conger ice shelf was relatively small, “it is one of the most significant collapse events anywhere in Antarctica since the early 2000s when the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated”. Ice shelves are extensions of ice sheets that float over the ocean, playing an important role in restraining inland ice. Possible it hit its tipping point following the #Antarctic #AtmosphericRiver and heatwave too? #CongerIceShelf #Antarctica /1wzmuOwdQn- Catherine Colello Walker March 24, 2022 ![]() km) ~March 15, seen in combo of #Landsat and #MODIS imagery. But climate models predict this could come to an end over the course of the century as air temperatures affect sea ice.Complete collapse of East Antarctica's Conger Ice Shelf (~1200 sq. Global rises in temperature have not yet affected East Antarctica, where Polarstern operates, in the same way as it has warmed West Antarctica. The region hit a record high temperature in 2020. The Polarstern conducts research in the area to help scientists understand the processes behind such glacial calving events as well as create computer models to help them predict how global warming will affect Antarctica. Huw Griffiths, from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC: "What they have found isn't shocking but it is amazing to get these images so soon after a calving event and it is definitely the largest area that will have been surveyed in this way." Hartmut Hellmer, a physical oceanographer at the AWI and head of the expedition, said in a statement: "It's extremely fortunate that we were able to respond flexibly and explore the calving event at the Brunt Ice Shelf in such detail." A warmer atmosphere driven by global warming could see icebergs calve more frequently. ![]() The AWI said icebergs of that size only carve roughly once every ten years in the Antarctic, though smaller bits tend to break off more often. Photos of the lifeforms can be seen below. The lifeforms they encountered included at least five species of fish, two species of squid, sea cucumbers, mollusks, and more. According to the AWI, which operates the Polarstern, the researchers onboard discovered impressive biodiversity below them. Presented with the new opportunity, the Polarstern sailed up the gap between the iceberg and the shelf from which it broke, and scientists began taking snapshots of the pristine environment of the ocean floor below. Until the glacier broke away, the seafloor underneath it had been off-limits to the ship because the imaging technology onboard involved dragging a camera behind the ship on a cable.
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