The Shackleton Ice Shelf in 2009. Conger was a part of the shelf till it disintegrated in March 2022.
NASA MODIS
Satellite imagery has captured the dramatic finish of a big ice shelf in East Antarctica.
The Conger ice shelf, which sits off the East Antarctic coast adjoining to the a lot bigger Shackleton ice shelf, fully collapsed on March 15. The shelf was round 1,200 sq. kilometers, solely slightly smaller than Los Angeles and a couple of third of the scale of the Larsen B ice shelf, which disintegrated in 2002.
Catherine Walker, an Earth and planetary scientist on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and NASA, tweeted satellite tv for pc imagery obtained by the Landsat and MODIS satellites on Thursday. The GIF shared by Walker exhibits the shelf slowly recede main as much as March 14 after which the following picture, from March 16, exhibits it has fully fractured.
“The Conger ice shelf was there after which out of the blue it was gone,” mentioned Andrew Mackintosh, an ice sheet skilled and head of the college of Earth, ambiance and the atmosphere at Monash University in Australia.
Ice sheets are essential to holding again the circulate of ice on the continent into the ocean. “If they collapse, then ice circulate from inland accelerates and results in sea degree rise,” he mentioned.
If you’ve got been maintaining a tally of the icy southern finish of the Earth currently, you are most likely conscious that Antarctica has lately skilled some unusually excessive warmth. At Concordia Station, a joint Italian-French base in East Antarctica, temperatures hit a excessive of minus 11.8 levels Celsius in mid-March. Cold, sure, however about 30 levels hotter than the standard common presently of yr.
The warmth was caused by an “atmospheric river,” an enormous stream of heat air that rolled over the area. It’s exhausting to know whether or not the excessive temperatures within the Antarctic led to the collapse of the ice shelf, however scientists might want to look at how the extremes have altered the atmosphere round Conger.
“We want to higher perceive how the nice and cozy interval has influenced soften alongside this entire sector of East Antarctica,” Mackintosh mentioned.
Antarctic analysis has principally centered on West Antarctica, as a result of it is rather more accessible and has been the main focus of well-resourced expeditions from the US and British Antarctic divisions. But the intense warming throughout March has thrust East Antarctica into the highlight and revealed a must extra completely perceive the area and its response to human-induced local weather change.
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