NASA Eyes Colossal Cracks In Ice Shelf Near Antarctic Station (cnet.com)

NASA is keeping an eye on the Brunt Ice Shelf, home to the British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI Research Station, which has growing cracks that are threatening to unload an iceberg soon. "NASA/USGS Landsat satellites are monitoring the action as the cracks grow," reports CNET. "When the iceberg calves, it could be twice the size of New York City. That would make it the largest berg to break off the Brunt ice shelf since observations of the area began in 1915." From the report: An annotated view of the ice shelf shows the cracks as they relate to the Halley VI station. The crack leading up the middle is especially concerning. It's been stable for 35 years, but NASA says it's now extending northward as fast as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) per year. As of December, Halley station was home to around 30 science and technical staff on missions to study the ice shelf and climate change in the polar region. The BAS completed a relocation of the futuristic-looking Halley station in 2017, placing it farther away from the unpredictable cracking. "It is not yet clear how the remaining ice shelf will respond following the break, posing an uncertain future for scientific infrastructure and a human presence on the shelf that was first established in 1955," NASA says. NASA says iceberg calving is "a normal part of the life cycle of ice shelves, but the recent changes are unfamiliar in this area."

Comments

Sounds like the beginning of the

[bobstreo]

movie Day After Tomorrow.

May be time to move the habitat again.

Re: Sounds like the beginning of the

[Opportunist]

They're just consistent. The four steps of denial are:

1. There is no global warming, you're faking it.
2. OK, there is some indication that the earth is getting warmer, but it's not man made.
3. Ok, so it is man made, but it's far from serious.
4. Ok, it's serious and we're fucked, but it's too late now.

The great thing about all four of them is that you don't have to do anything.

Re: Sounds like the beginning of the

[mapkinase]

These are not four steps of denial, these are four different denials

Re: Sounds like the beginning of the

[HiThere]

Well, a major series of volcanic eruptions could make global cooling the problem. You could probably achieve the same effect with a few asteroid impactors...but scaling them to be small enough to be relatively safe could be a problem.

Most of the other "geo-engineering" approaches are seriously untested, and we can't guess what the side effects would be. The proponents claim there wouldn't be any, or that they'd be minimal. But they haven't been (and can't be) be tested at beyond a pilot stage scale without being committed to.

E.g. A solar sail sunshade will cool the equatorial regions more than the poles, further decreasing the strength of the jet stream, and making weather much more irregular. What would it do to the ocean currents? What effect would that have? Etc. etc. etc.

So there are still answers, but the answers have their own problems.

Re:NASA, mission statement: "We do whatever!"

[religionofpeas]

Also if they have expertise and the means, I don't see what the problem is, even if it's not within the exact original scope of the organization.

Re:NASA, mission statement: "We do whatever!"

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is Republicans are afraid of the reality becoming known and accepted, because it would both literally and figuratively rip their party a new science-appreciating asshole the size of Texas to Florida.

Re:You mean NOAA

[Sique]

Actually, it's NASA, not NOAA. The ice shelf gets monitored by the Landsat mission, which is a NASA/USGS program.

Another Brexit

[bunyip]

I'm just wondering how long before the British Halley VI Research Station breaks away from Antarctica :-)

A.

O look!

[Applehu Akbar]

An entire science thread full of troll posts. Melting of this site is confirmed.

Re: More NORMAL stuff

[HiThere]

I don't think you understand what xkcd is about. It often points out true things that people have are hard time grasping. The referred chart is one of those instances. It's not as if you can't check their data points in other references.

Re: More NORMAL stuff

[ledow]

The science-based comic written by a scientist who worked building robots for NASA?

Yup.

Just because the media is considered "childish", the facts behind it are undoubtedly quite accurate (if not perfect). Also, there are entire books about visualisation of data that don't come close to what XKCD manages with its radiation chart and similar visualisations.