Friday Apr 07, 2000 New Iceberg Adrift Off Antarctica ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON  A massive iceberg has broken off the Ross ice shelf in the Antarctic. The National Ice Center announced the emergence of iceberg B-18 Friday. The iceberg, which tore away from the ice shelf April 2, measures four miles wide by 11 miles long, twice as wide and almost as long as New York's Manhattan Island.

The iceberg has moved slightly westward since breaking off the ice shelf but is not a threat to shipping lanes, officials said. The center said the iceberg is at 78 degree 3 minutes south latitude, 159 degrees 22 minutes west longitude.

The National Ice Center, in suburban Suitland, Md., is jointly operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Coast Guard and the Navy. It tracks icebergs via satellite in the event warnings need to be issued to mariners.

http://examiner.com/ap_w/AP_New_Iceberg.html

Previous iceberg breakups:

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002t18

-- GICC: Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 08, 2000

-- iceman (ice@north.pole), April 09, 2000

Answers

Iceman --

If enough ice melts, will it have any effect on the Earth's spin, axis of rotation, or wobble? Is more ice melting at one pole or the other, and does anyone know about the ratio of the amounts of ice between the North and South Poles? The North pole doesn't have a continent under it, so it would seem that if too much ice melts, the Earth will be bottom-heavy. Could we be in for a "tumble" at some future time? Kind of scary to think about.

-- worrier (worrier@doomers.rus), April 09, 2000.

Worrier: The Antartic ice pack is stable, according to a recent NYTimes article on global warning research. It's not a near-term (100 years) threat.

But the Greenland ice pack is melting. The last time (20,000 years ago) the Greenland ice pack collapsed, ocean levels went up 20 feet.

So "they" say.

-- (retard@but.happy), April 09, 2000.

Whenever a superberg like B15 breaks off the ice shelf, the sheer weight of it bumping and knocking against the ice will cause a lot of secondary calving. Hence B16, B17 and now B18 all within a few weeks.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), April 11, 2000.

I wish I were more compulsive in saving articles. Just last week some reservations were expressed by both civilian and military agencies involved with global positioning satellites about reduction in ice pack weight at the poles. They are concerned that unbalancing of the ice packs may effect the inclination of Earth's rotation by a signicant fraction of a degree, thus diminishing the accuracy of GPS's by several, even tens, of kilometers.

Hallyx

"REUNITE GONDWANALAND!"

(win valuable prizes!)

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), April 11, 2000.

Thanks, folks. I'm still waiting for Mu (Lemuria) to rise in the Pacific. Maybe that's where those underwater temples off Okinawa that there seems to be a major media blackout on, came from. Supposedly a major chunk of it is to rise off of New Zealand. What day you Down Under guys?

-- worrier (worrier@doomers.rus), April 11, 2000.