Giant Iceberg to Collide with Glacier

OECD writes "NASA reports that a massive 100-mile-long iceberg is on a collision course (movie) with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January 15, 2005."

Iceburg?

[anno1a]

What's an iceburg?

Need a better view

[Albinoman]

Things like this dont happen too often. Surely someone can sacrifice a few bucks to set up a camera in the front row. Maybe it could be some inspiration for those CGI effects in Hollywood.

Re:Iceburg?

[britneys 9th husband]

Certain towns with a distinctive style of architecture are referred to as iceburgs. Here is an example of one iceburg's hotel [icehotel.com].

Ooooh 300 million tons

[asliarun]

(been a long time since i did some math)

From the site:-
"The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth"

Pulling figures from the nether region, i'm assuming the berg to be 100mts high. This would give us:-
Surface area = 3000 sq. km = 3000 x 1000 x 1000 = 3 x 10^9 sq. mt.
Thus, volume of berg = 3 x 10^9 x 100 = 3 x 10^11 cubic mts.

Now, i know that roughly, 1 cubic meter of ice (water) = 1000kg.

Thus, weight of berg = 3 x 10^11 x 1000 = 3 x 10^14 kgs.

That's 3000000,000,00,000kgs. = 3000000,000,00 metric tons = 300000000 kilotons = 300000 million tons!

If my math is correct, then oooh boy, this is going to be one heck of a fender bender.

Re:So?

[Simon Brooke]

Is there anything that could possibly have less consequence?

Not much, if you live in Montana.

But if you live in Texas, or Louisiana, or Florida, it's got quite a lot of consequence. Ice melts on its exposed edges. So break it up into smaller pieces and it melts faster, decreasing the salinity of the ocean, and thus affecting circulation, which leads to changes in storm patterns. Had any hurricanes lately?

Melting of floating ice, of course, doesn't change the sea level. But the floating glacier provides back-pressure which holds back the much larger glacier on shore. If you break off the floating part of the glacier and release the back-pressure, more of the non-floating part slides down into the sea and starts to float, and that does change the sea level. How high do you want your tide today?

Re:So?

[CmdrGravy]

I'm not sure just how fresh the water in Icebergs is but increased amounts of fresh water in the Ocean can cause problems.

I remember watching a program a while back which said that due to global warming huge russian rivers were dumping much more than the usual amount of fresh water in the North Atlantic.

The North Atlantic contains one end of the Gulf Stream where the warm water sinks down and flows back to the Gulf Of Mexico to be reheated. Apparently if the salinity of the water reduces by any more the warm water might not sink down and in effect turn off the Gulf Stream at which point we in the UK would be pretty f#cked.

How many other scientist agree with this idea though I am not sure.

Re:Iceburg?

[OECD]

Welcome to Iceburg, Drygalski. Population 0.

Doh! I finally get a story on slashdot, and I have a typo. Well, I feel a little better that someone at NOAA did the same thing here [noaa.gov].

And who the heck modded you offtopic? They didn't R the FA, obviously.

Cm'on! It's an opportunity

[sponglish]

Geez, here you've got a gigantic source of relatively clean water, so get a fleet of tugboats and drag it where it'll do some good. First spray it with a reflective overcoating to slow melting, then tow it to the Middle East or Africa. You can put it in a holding pen and slice off huge chunks with lasers. Instant irrigation!!