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Antarctica / Re: The Amery Ice Shelf Thread

« on: September 25, 2019, 09:11:07 PM »

Big claving at Amery!

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Antarctica / Re: What's new in Antarctica ?

« on: February 19, 2019, 10:59:28 PM »

Also a very interesting region to watch is around the southern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf (and its neighbours). The cracks in the picture (Beethoven Peninsula at bottom) will eventually help to break up Wilkins Ice Shelf completely within the next years.

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Antarctica / Re: PIG has calved

« on: October 06, 2018, 08:51:19 PM »

Action! That's a serious one!

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Antarctica / Re: Rift in Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf

« on: September 22, 2018, 01:27:43 PM »

My understanding is also that the rift will propagate parallel to the front but there are also some cracks perpendicular to the front which will split the developing ice berg into parts. As Grygory suggests, and similarly to Larsen C, there are areas in the ice shelf where two ice streams merged (suture zones) which can prevent rift propagation for some time because the ice lost the nicely ordered structure there. Further inhibiting rift propagation at the Ronne ice shelf is bottom accumulation stemming from refreezing supercooled water originating somewhere at greater depth near the grounding line. That can close newly formed rifts again.  However, now we have the left hand side of the ice berg essentially dangling freely and it can move back and forth with the tides etc. It is a huge lever and and should be able to open the rift much faster than before. That was also the case at Larsen C and was the reasoning behind my previous comment about a calving event rather soon. "Soon" in this context may still mean several month to probably a couple of years...

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