Antarctica – Fusion Nepal

Antarctica Green Icebergs Oceans Science

Some icebergs are a glorious emerald green. Why?

sudshr47 March 5, 2019

While traversing the seas off of eastern Antarctica in 1988, glaciologist Stephen Warren came upon green icebergs floating in the ocean. “We never expected to see green icebergs,” said Warren, noting that a deep blue hue — not emerald green — is commonly observed in these chunks of ice.

Over three decades later, Warren and a team of researchers have put forward an explanation for these rarely seen icebergs’ green hue. Their hypothesis, published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, argues that tiny iron-rich rocky particles, similar to flour or dust, are the culprits. Specifically, this finely ground-up rock, aptly named “glacial flour,” gets trapped in the ice on the bottom of ice shelves — the ends of glaciers that float over the ocean — ultimately lending to the ice’s deep green appearance. When the icebergs eventually snap off, the fresh bergs carry the verdant hue. Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Change Glacier Global Warming Mashable Video

Giant crater discovered under glacier in Antarctica

sudshr47 February 7, 2019

The cavity found underneath the Thwaites Glacier is said to be the size of Florida. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Global Warming, Antarctica, Climate Change, and Glacier

Antarctica Culture Simone Giertz Web Culture

Simone Giertz sent her removed brain tumor to Antarctica

sudshr47 February 5, 2019

It’s been quite the year for “The Queen of Shitty Robots,” Simone Giertz.

The diagnosis and surgery of a non-cancerous brain tumor, and now the return of it, hasn’t made things the easiest for the YouTube star.

While some would want to see the back of their removed tumor, Giertz managed to get a photo of it… in Antarctica.

After sending it far, far away, Giertz posted the image of the tumor on Twitter, complete with ice shelves in the background.

I sent my brain tumor to Antarctica and this is now my favorite photo of all timepic.twitter.com/ewNw83RnBP

— Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) February 4, 2019 Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Change Climate Environment Science Sea Level Rising

This glacier has a gigantic cavity and that’s not good for the sea level

sudshr47 February 3, 2019

Whether they’re in your teeth or in an Antarctic glacier, cavities are a bad sign.
The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica has developed a cavity roughly two-thirds the size of Manhattan and about 1,000 feet tall, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion L…

Antarctica Artificial Intelligence Gadgets robotics Science seaglider university of washington

Autonomous subs spend a year cruising under Antarctic ice

sudshr47 January 24, 2019

The freezing waters underneath Antarctic ice shelves and the underside of the ice itself are of great interest to scientists… but who wants to go down there? Leave it to the robots. They won’t complain! And indeed, a pair of autonomous subs have been nosing around the ice for a full year now, producing data unlike any other expedition ever has.

Antarctica Climate Environment Culture Mashable Video

Colin O’Brady makes history with solo mission across Antarctica

sudshr47 December 28, 2018

The American is the first person in history to cross the frozen continent without any assistance. Read more…More about Mashable Video, Antarctica, Culture, and Climate Environment

Antarctica Ice Shelf Icebergs Nasa Science

That rectangular iceberg NASA found is weird as hell, and it’s not the only one

sudshr47 October 23, 2018

Flying 1,500 feet above the Antarctic coast, NASA scientists recently passed over a bizarrely straight-edged rectangular iceberg and snapped a picture of the floating slab.

While an intriguing image for the many of us who don’t take aerial surveys of the changing, cracking, and melting Antarctic coast, these “tabular” icebergs are a common sight for scientists working in Antarctica.

“It’s not uncommon to see that in Antarctica — although that [the tabular iceberg spotted by NASA] is a fresh and sharp looking one,” Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in an interview. Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Environment Ice Shelf Science

Vibrating slab of Antarctic ice sounds like a horror movie

sudshr47 October 16, 2018

In the faraway realms at the bottom of the Earth, Antarctic scientists have unexpectedly recorded bizarre drone-like sounds.

After burying 34 seismic monitors in the snow atop the Ross Ice Shelf in 2014 — which is a massive Texas-sized slab of ice that floats over the Southern Ocean — the instruments picked up near-constant “buzzing” noises.

While normally inaudible to the human ear, the researchers have made these ultra-low frequencies detectable to our limited hearing range. They posted the eerie sounds online, along with a Geophysical Research Letters report on their greater research.

“If this vibration were audible, it would be analogous to the buzz produced by thousands of cicada bugs when they overrun the tree canopy and grasses in late summer,” Douglas MacAyeal, a glaciologist at the University of Chicago who had no role in the research, wrote in a commentary. Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Change Pine Island Glacier Science

A 19-mile-long crack has opened up on the vulnerable Antarctic coast. What’s next?

sudshr47 October 12, 2018

Over a matter of days in late September, Stef Lhermitte watched via satellite as a new, massive crack formed along the edge of Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier.

Just last year that glacier shed a Manhattan-sized slab of ice. But that particular iceberg was relatively small.

Lhermitte, a geoscientist specializing in remote sensing at the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology, expects this latest rift, when it eventually breaks, to produce an iceberg roughly 30 kilometers wide by 10 kilometers across (19 miles by 6 miles).

That would be Pine Island’s sixth-largest calving event since 2001 — producing an iceberg five times the size of Manhattan. Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Change Glaciers Global Warming Science

If Earth’s great ice sheets start collapsing, massive undersea walls could hold them back

sudshr47 September 21, 2018

It would be best for humanity if the colossal ice sheets that blanket Antarctica stayed put. But, there’s growing evidence that as the planet heats up, these sprawling glaciers could begin flowing into the ocean at an accelerated pace, boosting sea levels not in feet — but yards.

To halt the melting ice, some scientists have now proposed an ambitious geoengineering plan: constructing massive undersea walls to keep Antarctica’s ice in place.

As Earth’s climate continues to warm due to human-caused global warming, it’s still not well understood how quickly the ice sheets might collapse, but the melting of these glaciers is already underway. Read more…

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Antarctica Climate Change Global Warming Penguin Science

What can hundreds of dead penguins teach us about climate change?

sudshr47 September 20, 2018

A warmer world might be a penguin-less world.

New research has connected hundreds of mummified penguin carcasses to two disastrous weather events thought to be influenced by climate change.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, warns that these events might foreshadow what’s to come if the Earth continues to get hotter.

A team of Chinese and Australian researchers found the mummified Adélie penguins under a remarkably thick layer of sediment in Long Peninsula, East Antarctica, which usually has a dry climate. Read more…

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Antarctica Global Warming Ice Sheets Science Sea Level Rise

The collapse of Antarctica’s most vulnerable ice shelves would just be the start of our problems

sudshr47 July 19, 2018

There’s a reasonable chance that Antarctica’s two most vulnerable ice shelves — the ends of massive glaciers that float over the ocean — will succumb to Earth’s warming climate and eventually collapse into the sea.

These particular shelves, known as Larsen C and George VI, are perched on the Antarctic Peninsula — the finger that runs up towards South America. Glacial scientists have now gauged how much oceans would rise if the ice shelves fail, and the news isn’t good.

The research, published Thursday in the journal The Cryosphere, shows that taken together, the glaciers’ overall contribution to rising seas wouldn’t be enormous — adding some 10 millimeters (under half an inch) by the end of the century. Read more…

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Category: Antarctica