Strange Anomaly Happening In Antarctica!

since humanity first carried out explorations of antarctica in the late 18th century by james cook and his crew the icy continent has given up much of its mysteries over the centuries antarctica is the fifth largest continent in the world almost twice the size of australia ninety-nine percent of its land mass is covered in ice and it's home to about seventy percent of our planet's fresh water and ninety percent of our planet's freshwater ice antarctica is the coldest driest and windiest continent on earth it's a perfect place for ground exploration and that's why four thousand scientists are living there and recently they found strange anomalies within massive ice sheets of antarctica so what is it and why are scientists worried scientists have continuously surveyed much of the antarctic surface since the early 20th century and have kept track of all the continents ice shelves and their movements in one such ice shelf known as the brunt ice shelf they've recently discovered that an iceberg twice the size of new york city is poised to break away a recent nasa release says that a crack has been growing at a rate of about 2.5 miles or 4 kilometers per year since 2012. the crack started from the southern part of the brunt eye shelf and is steadily moving northwards and can soon meet with another growing chasm called the halloween crack that was discovered in october 2016 growing eastward from the mcdonald's ice rumples in the northern part of the ice shelf although the antarctica's ice shelves are in constant motion rising with the tides splitting off icebergs at its edges and growing again as inland glaciers feed it but this type of anomaly is not regular at all for the brunt ice shelf as there has been next to no activity within the ice shelf the glacier in question is around 1 700 square kilometers or about 656 square miles making it the fifth largest iceberg in the world that's currently being tracked by the national ice center in suitland maryland this news has sparked various safety concerns for scientists in the area especially ones in the british antarctic survey's halle station what exactly is driving these massive cracks to form in antarctica's ice shelves and what would be the effect on the ice sheet itself if this crack led to a complete breakage let's look at a similar situation that occurred in the last few years a similar giant crack was discovered in the larsen sea ice shelf in 2016. it was the fourth largest ice shelf in antarctica at the time just imagine it had an area of seventeen thousand one hundred square miles or forty four thousand two hundred square kilometers which is an area larger than the state of california but this crack was about to break off an iceberg with the length of 68 miles or 110 kilometers a width of more than 300 feet or 91 meters and a depth of 1600 feet or 500 meters more mysteriously by mid-2017 in less than a year the rift had extended another over 20 miles or 32 kilometers to a point where only two miles or three kilometers of unbroken ice remained and breaking was an absolute certainty and in mid-july the iceberg finally broke off from the larsen ci shelf taking away almost 13 of the ice shelf with itself and as of april 2020 scientists reported a68 has broken up into three pieces and is floating northwards towards open waters when it broke the iceberg was one of the largest ever twice the size of luxembourg and weighed in at almost 1 million tons what's driving these huge breakages in antarctica and is antarctica safe for now scientists are still trying to figure out this anomaly smaller carvings of icebergs are regular occurrences all over the shores of the continent these carvings are very much natural occurrences as losing icebergs to the ocean is how these ice sheets maintain equilibrium balancing the inputs and outputs from ice streams in and around them however such large carvings from major ice shelves are not consistent with the natural pattern at all such large carvings leave the parent ice shelves unstable and more susceptible to breakages there can be various reasons for such phenomenon one definite reason for such occurrences is the accelerated climate change due to the rise of greenhouse gases over the last few centuries since the industrial revolution the concentration of carbon dioxide has been rising exponentially at a rate of about 0.17 per year this change is primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels but also to large-scale tropical deforestation which depletes the climate system's capacity for photosynthesis climate temperature changes depend on the variations in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere carbon dioxide controls temperature because the carbon dioxide molecules in the air absorb infrared radiation the carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere are virtually transparent to the visible radiation that delivers the sun's energy to the earth but the earth in turn re-radiates much of the energy in the invisible infrared region of the spectrum this radiation is easily absorbed by carbon dioxide when the carbon dioxide concentration is sufficiently high even its weaker absorption bands become effective and a greater amount of infrared radiation is absorbed as it prevents its escape into space the trapped radiation warms up the atmosphere antarctica has experienced air temperature increases of three degrees celsius in the antarctic peninsula it's five times the mean rate of global warming as reported by the intergovernmental panel on climate change over the past 50 years the west coast of the antarctic peninsula has been one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet this warming is not only restricted to land but also can be noted in the ocean surrounding it upper ocean temperatures to the west of the antarctic peninsula have increased over one degree celsius since 1955 thus ice shelves in western antarctica are particularly susceptible to warming oceans as relatively warmer water eats away at the ice shelves floating over the ocean since 1992 it's averaged a net loss of 65 million metric tons of ice a year one of the defining characteristics of west antarctica is that the majority of the ice sheet is grounded on a bed that lies below sea level when the ice sheet is attached to a bed below sea level ocean currents can deliver warm water to its grounding lines the location where the ice sheet attaches to the bed in some spots the bed lies more than a mile and a half below sea level when these grounding lines start to retreat ocean water can infiltrate between the ice and the bed and cause the ice sheet to float off its grounding line scientists recognized that this is the first step in a potential chain reaction ocean heat eats away at the ice the grounding line retreats inland and ice shelves lose mass and when ice shelves lose mass they lose the ability to hold back the flow of inland glaciers meaning those glaciers can accelerate and thin out as a result of the acceleration this thinning only leads to more grounding line retreat more acceleration and more thinning in all this push and pull sudden fractures can occur leading to massive breakages of icebergs like the one currently taking place in the brunt ice shelf once these icebergs break away from its parent mass it becomes more exposed to warmer ocean currents and melts faster and as more ice flows into the ocean every year it leads to an eventual rise in global sea levels this is the biggest fear among scientists with climate change for example the munston sea region of west antarctica which is the most vulnerable to the rise in ocean temperature contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by four feet 1.2 meters the most recent un intergovernmental panel on climate change report estimates that by 2100 sea levels will rise somewhere from just less than one foot to about three feet or 26 to 98 centimeters but the vast majority of these projections do not take into account the possibility of major ice loss in the form of massive breakages in antarctica the munston sea region is only a fraction of the whole west antarctic ice sheet which if melted completely would rise global sea levels by about 16 feet or 5 meters this eventual sea level rise will have a profound impact on our civilization as we know it today in the extreme scenario if most of the antarctic ice melts the existing coastline of our present continents will be completely unrecognizable raising the sea level by 216 feet or 66 meters in north america the entire atlantic seaboard would vanish along with florida and the gulf coast in california san francisco's hills would become a cluster of islands and the central valley a giant bay the amazon basin and the paraguay river basin in south america would become atlantic inlets wiping out buenos aires coastal uruguay and most of paraguay although africa would lose less of its land to the ultimate sea level rise however in egypt alexandria and cairo will be swamped by the intruding mediterranean in european continent london would have been completely swallowed underwater venice will be reclaimed by the adriatic sea netherlands will have long since surrendered to the sea and most of denmark will be gone too meanwhile the mediterranean's expanding waters will also have swelled the blackened caspian seas asia would be completely changed as well land now inhabited by 600 million chinese would flood as with all of bangladesh and much of coastal india but how to predict these sudden anomalies and whether these big carving will lead to a collapse of the ice shelf itself at present the anomaly under the bronte shelf is still progressing and both cracks are moving towards one another this has allowed scientists to take some risks and monitor the process in great details this research has already yielded a lot of new data and prediction models to further explain these anomalies under the ice sheets of antarctica that's all we have for you today 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Channel: Destiny

Views: 1,009,229

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Keywords: antarctica, strange anomaly, science, scientists are worried, worry, archeology, strange discovery, anomaly, strangest anomalies, earth, earth anomalies, documentary, national geographic, discovery, Antarctica discoveries, found in alaska

Id: _A8vS2yngkk

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020