When massive icebergs break loose from places like Antarctica it can send tons of ice floating elsewhere, and it’s one of the most illustrative signs of global warming. Well, experts say exactly one of these calving events has happened again, the third such event in just the last 4 years.
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00:03 When massive icebergs break loose from places
00:05 like Antarctica, it can send tons of ice floating elsewhere.
00:09 And it's one of the most illustrative signs
00:11 of global warming.
00:12 Well, experts say one of these calving events
00:15 has happened again, the third such event
00:17 in just the last four years.
00:19 The iceberg broke loose on May 20,
00:21 captured in this image by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite.
00:24 The giant iceberg has now been named A83.
00:27 And you can see it breaking free, and it's utterly massive.
00:31 Experts say this chunk of ice is around 147 square miles
00:35 an area, or nearly seven times the size of Manhattan
00:38 in New York.
00:39 This and other calving events like it
00:41 reveal a weakening of ice in Antarctica
00:43 caused by increasing temperatures at our poles.
00:46 The effects of global warming tend
00:48 to be more extreme in the coldest areas of the planet,
00:50 with temperatures going up faster at the poles
00:52 than anywhere else.
00:53 Calving events like this are of particular import
00:56 to climate scientists as well.
00:58 When giant ice sheets break loose,
00:59 they not only indicate warming oceans,
01:01 but these sheets also melt faster as a result,
01:04 raising sea levels and acidifying our planet's waters
01:06 at a quicker rate.
01:07 This also exposes a greater area of the ocean water
01:11 to solar radiation, exacerbating the problem even further.
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