Thaindian News

Mar 8 (THAINDIAN NEWS) With Global Warming already a fear in many people’s minds, the fact that state sized chunks of Antarctica are breaking free can cause an avalanche of panic. On February 28, an iceberg, which was 25 and a half miles by one and a half miles, broke off of the southwestern front of the ice shelf, and collided with the continent, breaking off a huge piece of Antarctica. A slideshow of the crash, know as the “Mertz Glacier Crash” can be seen here. You can see very clearly how one iceberg breaks off and slams into the Mertz Glacier Tongue, causing it to break away from the rest of the ice. Scientist do warn that this could cause disruptions to the marine life there.

One hundred and sixty miles of the ice shelf’s interior has already disappeared by disintegrating. The temperature rises just a tiny bit every year, and causes the ice shelves to shrink. Experts are stressing that this is normal, however, and does not mean that the world is coming to an end. According to Ted Scambos,a glacier expert, it is to be expected, “I need to stress that the event in the Mertz area, and indeed most of the iceberg calving in Antarctica is a completely normal, expected activity for a stable ice sheet.” David Long, who is a scientist working at Bringham Young as an Iceberg Tracker had this to say, “To my knowledge there is no evidence that there is more net ice loss in these big bergs now than in the historic past.”