An iceberg the size of Delaware just broke off Antarctica

An iceberg the size of Delaware has broken free from an Antarctic ice shelf, leaving the rest of the shelf vulnerable to collapse and serving as a harbinger of future sea-level rise that could pose a serious threat to coastal communities.

Marlene Cimons writes in Think Progress about
a massive chunk of ice breaking free from
an Antarctic ice shelf.

The break in the Larsen C ice shelf — the most northern major ice shelf in the region occurred Wednesday, according to Project MIDAS, a UK-based monitoring group.

Ice shelves are the thick, floating ice at the edge of the continent, and they serve as buttresses, keeping onshore glaciers from sliding into the sea. Researchers have been monitoring the rift in the Larsen C shelf for years and became alarmed in December when the breach widened dramatically. At one point this spring, the rift grew by 11 miles in less than a week, leaving only eight miles left and raising fears that a complete break was imminent. More than six months later — in the middle of the Antarctic winter — the break has occurred.

Read the Think Progress story by Marlene Cimons - “An iceberg the size of Delaware just broke off Antarctica.”

Scientists stunned by Antarctic rainfall and a melt area bigger than Texas

Scientists have documented a recent, massive melt event on the surface of highly vulnerable West Antarctica that, they fear, could be a harbinger of future events as the planet continues to warm.

An iceberg lies in the Ross Sea with Mount Erebus
in the background near McMurdo Station in Antarctica,
 November 11, 2016. A sheet of meltwater lasted for as long
as 15 days in some places on the surface of the Ross Ice
Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, during the
 Antarctic summer of 2016.

In the Antarctic summer of 2016, the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest floating ice platform on Earth, developed a sheet of meltwater that lasted for as long as 15 days in some places. The total area affected by melt was 300,000 square miles, or larger than the state of Texas, the scientists report.

That’s bad news because surface melting could work hand in hand with an already documented trend of ocean-driven melting to compromise West Antarctica, which contains over 10 feet of potential sea level rise.

Read The Washington Post story - “Scientists stunned by Antarctic rainfall and a melt area bigger than Texas.”

Losing respect for our food.

British consumers were put out in February this year when supermarkets temporarily began rationing lettuce and zucchini after flash flooding and snow wiped out crops in Spain.

One crisis such as Cyclone Debbie
is sufficient to empty our
supermarket shelves.

It was a minor inconvenience but one which should fill us with unease. Such breakdowns in the food supply may be a harbinger of things to come and should be shaking the rich world out of its complacency when it comes to food.

A staggering 30 per cent of global food production is wasted, much of it in the well-fed Western world. Yet rising populations and shifting preferences towards more meat consumption internationally, mean farmers need to virtually double food calorie production from 2005 levels if we are to feed the world come 2050.

Read the Pursuit piece by the University of Melbourne’s Professor Timothy Reeves - “Losing respect for our food.”

(Our attitude to wood is clearly wasteful and remarkably casual until we sense there may be a shortage - that was clearly evident post Cyclone Debbie when a niece who lives in Brisbane went to her local supermarket to buy some food and at almost entirely all gone, the shelves were near empty. It appears we have little or no personal or community sense of rationing food - Robert McLean)