Clue to break-up of ice shelves
Icebergs breaking off
US researchers have come up with a way to predict the rate at which ice shelves break apart into icebergs.
These sometimes spectacular occurrences, called calving events, are a key step in the process by which climate change drives sea level rise.
Ice sheets, such as those in Antarctica and Greenland, spread under their own weight and flow off land over the ocean water.
Ice shelves are the thick, floating lips of ice sheets or glaciers that extend out past the coastline.
Ice cracking off into the ocean from Antarctica and Greenland could be the main contributor to global sea level rise in the future.
If all the ice in Greenland and Antarctica melted, seas would rise by more than 60m (200ft).
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 assessment forecast that seas could rise by 18 to 59 cm (7-23ins) this century. However, in giving those figures, it conceded that ice behaviour was poorly understood.
Filed under: Uncategorized on November 29th, 2008
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