Comments on: Larsen C ice shelf about to lose %10 https://habitablezone.com/2017/05/31/larsen-c-ice-shelf-about-to-lose-%10/ Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:18:10 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: hank https://habitablezone.com/2017/05/31/larsen-c-ice-shelf-about-to-lose-%10/#comment-39652 hank Wed, 12 Jul 2017 16:36:20 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=64513#comment-39652 The big berg's broken--and months ahead of schedule. Winter is closing in fast in the southern hemisphere. http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/ <blockquote>A one trillion tonne iceberg – one of the biggest ever recorded - has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes.</blockquote> The big berg’s broken–and months ahead of schedule. Winter is closing in fast in the southern hemisphere.

http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/

A one trillion tonne iceberg – one of the biggest ever recorded – has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes.

]]> By: hank https://habitablezone.com/2017/05/31/larsen-c-ice-shelf-about-to-lose-%10/#comment-39370 hank Thu, 01 Jun 2017 01:00:23 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=64513#comment-39370 So this probably won't calve til next summer. By that time, the news from the Arctic will be on everyone's mind. We may not get a record breaker like 2012 this year in the North, but even if we don't it will come very close. Already, ice volume is lower than its ever been in the Arctic, and ice extent for the last three years has been pretty low, although not yet a record. Sea ice in the Southern Ocean is tracking pretty much the same as the 30 year average, but its about one and a quarter million square kilometers less that the average for the same date. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ Click on the Arctic/Antarctic buttons to look at extent data from both poles. The calving of these big shelves is just (please forgive the expression) the tip of the iceberg. Ice is calving off all these shelves on a broad front. BTW, The Larsen C berg, at about 10,000 km^2, will be about three times the size of the already-calved Larsen B shelf mentioned in your article. So this probably won’t calve til next summer. By that time, the news from the Arctic will be on everyone’s mind. We may not get a record breaker like 2012 this year in the North, but even if we don’t it will come very close. Already, ice volume is lower than its ever been in the Arctic, and ice extent for the last three years has been pretty low, although not yet a record.

Sea ice in the Southern Ocean is tracking pretty much the same as the 30 year average, but its about one and a quarter million square kilometers less that the average for the same date.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

Click on the Arctic/Antarctic buttons to look at extent data from both poles. The calving of these big shelves is just (please forgive the expression) the tip of the iceberg. Ice is calving off all these shelves on a broad front.

BTW, The Larsen C berg, at about 10,000 km^2, will be about three times the size of the already-calved Larsen B shelf mentioned in your article.

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