Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Nope, no global warming here

Vast Antarctic Ice Shelf On Verge of Collapse


Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers - about 10 times the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf - about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers - about the size of Northern Ireland)- was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."..

5 comments:

Stassa said...

Don't worry. High Brazil won't sink. It's all rumours!

Anonymous said...

Wasn't that how the film "The Day After Tomorrow" started?

Outis said...

*Shamelessly ripping off a famous movie quote*

“I think we’re going to need a bigger boat!”

ballgame said...

LiveScience.com has some footage if you're curious what this looks like. Be aware that the choice of music for the clip is totally bizarre. Either the music selector is utterly clueless about the importance of what we're seeing or is deliberately masking its meaning.

belledame222 said...

that would be "ark," there.