City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica 249
LeadSongDog writes "Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite is showing that the Antarctic's Pine Island ice shelf has calved a 'berg of 720 square kilometres, 'the size of Hamburg.' Angelika Humbert says 'The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide.' The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters.' Goodbye Florida.
Re:what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait what?
By definition, that is land. My guess is that you meant to ask if it is impossible to have land below sea level, and the answer is no. Much of New Orleans and Death Valley in the US are below sea level, they just happen to be surrounded by natural (and some artificial) barriers that keep the water out.
My understanding of the point is that the ice in question is standing on solid land below the ocean's surface, which means that its volume is not currently reflected by the height of the oceans today. In addition, the land is sloped towards the rest of the ocean so, should the ice in question calve off it will enter the ocean rather than simply cracking but staying put.
An added issue, which has been seen in the past couple of decades in Greenland, is that if the ice calves and slides into the ocean, not only will mass previously perched on land enter the ocean, but the mass removed from the antarctic plate will cause the plate to rise significantly... causing less volume for the ocean in that area, and REALLY messing with plate tectonics.
Some people think there's a correlation between the rising landmass in Greenland and some of the recent quakes in the Pacific.
Re:No such thing as 'man made global warming' (Score:3, Interesting)
At this point, telling everyone to use a bike to go to work and acting like some smug green idealist saying "I told you so" isn't going to fix anything so shut the hell up and learn to surf.