London. An iceberg measuring 1,500 square kilometers, equivalent to 15 times the area of Paris, broke off on Sunday from Antarctica, a group of British scientists reported yesterday.
Although the region is threatened by global warming, the calving is not due to climate change, said the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a body that researches the polar regions.
The ice block broke away from the pack between 7 and 8 pm GMT on Sunday, after a strong tide widened an existing crack in the ice shelf, BAS said.
Another iceberg of a similar size had already broken off two years ago in the same area, dubbed the Brunt ice shelf and on which the British Halley VI research base is located.
Large fissures in the ice shelves have increased for a decade, according to observations by glaciologists.
In 2016, the BAS decided to move the Halley VI base to a place located about 20 kilometers away for fear that it would drift on an iceberg.
Dame Jane Francis, director of BAS, in turn, said: “Our glaciologists and operations teams have anticipated this event. Ice shelf measurements are made several times a day using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station. They measure how the ice block deforms and moves, and the information is compared with satellite images from the European and US space agencies and the German TerraSAR-X satellite.
All the data is sent to Cambridge for analysis, so we know what happens even in the Antarctic winter, when there are no station staff, it’s dark for 24 hours and the temperature drops below -50 degrees Celsius.” .
Dominic Hodgson, BAS glaciologist, added that “this calving event was expected and is part of the natural behavior of the Brunt shelf. It is not related to climate change. Our scientific and operational teams continue to monitor it in real time to ensure it is secure and to maintain the delivery of information that is gathered at Halley.”
Halley VI is a platform of international importance for the observation of atmospheric and space weather in a sensitive area. In 2013, it obtained the status of global station of the Global Atmosphere Watch of the World Meteorological Organization, becoming the 29th in the world and the third in Antarctica.
Research Station VI is located on the up to 150 meter thick Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
It should not be forgotten that the continent suffers the consequences of global warming. Record temperatures were recorded in the area last year. The extent of the ice in that part reached in February 2022 the minimum ever recorded in 44 years of satellite observations, recently indicated the annual report of the European program on climate change Copernicus.
In 2021, the melting of an iceberg, 4,000 kilometers north of where it broke off in 2017, released more than 150 billion tons of fresh water mixed with nutrients, worrying scientists about its impact on an ecosystem fragile.
With information from the editorial
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