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Earth Science

Antarctica Gives Birth To World's Largest Iceberg (reuters.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
A giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Majorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday. From a report: The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted in recent satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the space agency said in a statement posted on its website with a photo of the enormous, oblong ice sheet. Its surface area spans 4,320 square km (1,668 square miles) and measures 175 km (106 miles) long by 25 km (15 miles) wide. By comparison, Spain's tourist island of Majorca in the Mediterranean occupies 3,640 square km (1,405 square miles). The U.S. state of Rhode Island is smaller still, with a land mass of just 2,678 square km (1,034 square miles). The enormity of A-76, which broke away from Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, ranks as the largest existing iceberg on the planet, surpassing the now second-place A-23A, about 3,380 square km (1,305 square miles) in size and also floating in the Weddell Sea.
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Antarctica Gives Birth To World's Largest Iceberg More

Antarctica Gives Birth To World's Largest Iceberg

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  • WIth icebergs this big... (Score:3)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:15PM (#61404074)

    Surely even if half the burg was lost to melting we could maybe tug that to south africa or the tip of south america. I suppose it comes down to a function of how valuable the water/ice is vs getting it closer, but if it indeed the largest berg it may be worth attempting to use it as opposed to just letting it eventually melt into the ocean.

    Also, I imagine if we can use some of it, that's less water going into the ocean, therefore a fraction less sea level rise. Obviously, with the berg completely disconnected from land and now floating in sea, the ocean has already risen from this event.

    Interesting times.

    • Re:WIth icebergs this big... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:19PM (#61404088) Journal

      I would suggest that the difficult part of harvesting icebergs isn't towing it to a port, it's getting it from the port to a usable location. Even if you wanted to use it as San Francisco drinking water, getting the iceberg into city pipes isn't an easy task.

      • Re:WIth icebergs this big... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:30PM (#61404134)

        LOL.

        I think towing even HALF a 100 mile long iceberg would be the hard part.

        Could it even be moved by all the ships in the world combined?

        • LOL.

          I think towing even HALF a 100 mile long iceberg would be the hard part.

          Could it even be moved by all the ships in the world combined?

          You only need one.

          Boaty McBoatface.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shess ( 31691 )

          LOL.

          I think towing even HALF a 100 mile long iceberg would be the hard part.

          Could it even be moved by all the ships in the world combined?

          Standard scifi option is to mount engines to the burg itself.

          How? You just mount the engines to the same cleats you'd use to tow it, right?

        • put giant sails on it. tacking would be a bitch though.

        • Sails. Lots and lots of sails.

      • I would suggest that the difficult part of harvesting icebergs isn't towing it to a port, it's getting it from the port to a usable location.

        No, the hard part is lifting it out of the sea and putting it into a 100-mile long tank so it can melt there.

        • Silly. All you need to do is leave it in the water and put a bag around it.

          Puncture with straw.

      • It's so big it sounds as if a temporary water bottling plant could be set up on the Iceberg itself. Granted, an operation like that would be plenty dangerous and expensive, but I'd imagine a fair amount of folks with fat wallets would be willing to pay a pretty penny for bottles of iceberg water.

        • ... I'd imagine a fair amount of folks with fat wallets would be willing to pay a pretty penny for bottles of iceberg water.

          Just put a picture of an iceberg on a bottle of filtered tap water. Nobody would know the difference.

        • Was there not a plan to use icebergs as landing fields in WW2?

          • Was there not a plan to use icebergs as landing fields in WW2?

            IIRC, a Brit named Pike came up with a combination of sawdust and ice. It was slower to melt than regular ice.

            Churchill wanted to make giant aircraft carriers out of it, but it was too impractical.

            • The material is called Pykrete, the proposed ship was to be called HMS Habbakuk. Not sure how much serious scientific research has been done but its a fairly popular topic with pop science TV shows. The Mythbusters and it seems every regional copycat to them have done episodes about it. Not sure how well a real pykrete ship would work if designed and built by people who know what they are doing. Probably not too well which is why nobody has bothered.

        • Why not a floating bottling plant? It could have a massive ice chipper on one side/end that pulls in chunks of iceberg through operation, melts in, purifies it and bottles it. Then, when the iceberg gets infeasibly small, off to the next big 'berg to do the same thing.

          And don't tell me it wouldn't be profitable. People are bleeding morons when it comes to water. The most plentiful substance on earth and people pay up to five bucks a bottle now just for your typical spring water. Calling it "ancient rai

        • Especially if the bottles are geo tagged and get more and more expensive the more of thee iceberg melts away.

      • you think towing something weighing around a trillion tons is not the hard part? if you have something that can effectively tow that then chopping it up and getting it into the pipes is a doddle by comparison.
    • Also, I imagine if we can use some of it, that's less water going into the ocean, therefore a fraction less sea level rise.

      The ice was already in the sea. It was not ice which sloughed off from Antarctica itself. Therefore, just like an ice cube in your drink, there will be no rise in sea level.

      As to your first part, do you have any idea the logistics, let alone the cost, of trying to move something that big with that much mass? At this point you can't even cut it up into smaller pieces.

      • The ice was already in the sea. It was not ice which sloughed off from Antarctica itself. Therefore, just like an ice cube in your drink, there will be no rise in sea level.

        Directly, no. It won't.
        Indirectly, it will.
        The equilibrium has been altered- a critical mass damper on the continental ice mass flow has been removed, and the system will recalibrate- i.e., ice will flow faster onto the shelf until the mass is replaced, or the continental ice is gone.

        As to your first part, do you have any idea the logistics, let alone the cost, of trying to move something that big with that much mass? At this point you can't even cut it up into smaller pieces.

        I'm more worried about your ability to stop it should you be insane enough to move it.
        The kinetic energy of something with that much mass is mind numbingly huge for even tiny, tiny velocities.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Jack9 ( 11421 )

        > Therefore, just like an ice cube in your drink, there will be no rise in sea level.

        FYI
        Fresh water, of which icebergs are made, is less dense than salty sea water. So while the amount of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This results in a small increase in the water level (fractions of centimeters).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      I suspect there would be some . . . challenges in trying to tow an iceberg larger than Rhode Island anywhere, much less halfway around the world.

    • For a lot smaller energy expenditure, we could desalinate the same volume of local seawater at places where we need fresh water.

  • As long as they're throwing out numbers, use numbers millennials can relate to.

    • Few of us are familiar with the island of Majorca. For a better comparison the area of the iceberg (1668 square miles) is slightly greater than the area of Long Island (1401 square miles).

  • Let's put it this way: the iceberg was roughly 650x the size of all the high school football fields in Texas put together.

    • dang! That's huge.

      Larger than the urban area of Miami (3300 km2) but smaller than Houston (4930 km2)

    • : the iceberg was roughly 650x the size of all the high school football fields in Texas put together.

      What is the proportion of those football fields between American football and Association football? I'm a stickler for accuracy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        Trick question. Association football does not have standard pitch dimensions, only a (rather large) range of acceptable dimension.

  • "The enormity of A-76..."

    So far as I can tell from the story, A-76 hasn't done anything criminal, sinful, or otherwise morally wrong, so why use 'enormity'?
    • Because it sounds like enormous, and enormousness is just too long apparently. Either that, or this particular iceberg calved off from somewhere in the vicinity of the Mountains of Madness [wikipedia.org] (it's from the right part of the world).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )

      "The enormity of A-76..." So far as I can tell from the story, A-76 hasn't done anything criminal, sinful, or otherwise morally wrong, so why use 'enormity'?

      enormity
      /inôrmd/
      noun: enormity; plural noun: enormities
      1. the great or extreme scale, seriousness, or extent of something perceived as bad or morally wrong.

      Seems like the great scale, as well as seriousness, of a new, large iceberg adrift in the ocean would be perceived as bad by most individuals. Definition seems to fit.

    • Because that's it's basic meaning? Large size. It's not exclusive for referring to something morally wrong.
  • Though I wouldn't know what to buy for a present.

    • Though I wouldn't know what to buy for a present.

      A few million tons of rock salt?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Though I wouldn't know what to buy for a present.

        A few million tons of rock salt?

        Yeah, but what color salt?

        (Careful. I hear water, is woke.)

    • The gender reveal party nearly destroyed the Earth.

  • Just think of all those coal plant smokestacks in China as cigars that a new dad is handing out and the analogy will become clear.

  • The articles claiming this iceberg will raise sea level are being written as we wait. OK, I just checked, and I'm shocked (and pleased) to be wrong. The articles in the MSM currently point out that this is neither related to AGW nor will it raise sea levels. They are actually avoiding click bait.

  • Context would be useful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:53PM (#61404240)
    So a new 1,668 square mile ice berg is now the new "largest iceberg afloat", surpassing a 1,034 square mile iceberg that was already currently afloat.

    So is this a big deal? Are there normally a couple 1000+ square mile icebergs every year, making this totally run of the mill? Or is there sometimes a single giant iceberg in a year but not usually two, which is why we're hearing about the second one when the first one didn't make a big splash in the news? Or in a normal year is 100 square miles considered "large" and even one, much less two icebergs of this size is incredibly rare or even unprecedented?

    I'm sure i can easily find the answer if i go digging (maybe even just by RTFA,) but it's frustrating that the news, including slashdot, is sensationalizing it because the numbers are "big" and they can make silly comparisons to other objects without providing the context for the average reader to know whether this is actually significant news or just a fluff piece about how large ice is large.
    • Big deal? On it's own no, ice shelves calve, that's their nature and sometimes resulting icebers are very large. The really interesting bit isn't the iceberg itself, but the ice sheet that calved it. How often it calves and how much is a good indicator, is the rate of ice flow increasing/decreasing, how fast, that sort of things matters, but you can't point to any one iceberg as meaningful.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Daetrin ( 576516 )
        That's true, but if these icebergs are actually an average size for an average year than it doesn't mean much at all. On the other hand if they're much larger than normal it's definitely significant but it could actually mean any number of things and have any number of causes, which might already be known or might bear further investigation.

        But blurb writers don't want to talk about the details because that's not as noteworthy or clickbaity, so they're just emphasizing the size without any context. And i
    • Was listening to an interview yesterday on it with one of the scientists working down there. They calve to this size about every 20 years or so. So it is relatively rare for them to be this size but certainly not unexpected or abnormal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      The first one made a big splash in the news too, when it carved off 4-5 years ago.

  • Mallorca (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:54PM (#61404248) Homepage Journal
    For those who want to find it on a map. Two Ls in Spanish, phonetically, I guess , a j. Damn fine TV show.

    • Are you talking like a dead tree map? Because every online map will be just fine with the Spanish spelling.

  • How many tug boats would it take to drag that to the coast of California?
    • We might also consider how many airplanes it would take to fly all the Californians to the iceberg.

    • Or, could we tug the coast of California to the iceberg instead?

      California wants more potable water? And do so without increasing it's CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels? Then they can do what the UAE did, build a nuclear power plant to power desalination plants.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]

      There is no path to a zero carbon economy without nuclear power. So says the experts.
      Energy from wind, water and sun is a road map to nowhere: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
      Energy from renewable sources is

  • It's the only way to be sure ...

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