And in January 2022, Iceberg D-28 rounded the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue, drifting roughly 4,300 kilometers (2,600 miles) from where it broke totally free of the Amery Ice Shelf in 2019.
March 6, 2022
After almost pummeling the vulnerable Brunt Ice Shelf, a flock of Antarctic icebergs settles in for the austral winter.
In summer season 2019, a rift that began to speed up across the Brunt Ice Shelf threatened to release an iceberg about two times the size of New York City. As another Antarctic summer season comes to an end, the ice shelf stubbornly continues to hold together. It has even gotten away– so far– collisions with various icebergs that drifted neighboring and threatened to pound the rack like an icy wrecking ball.
Throughout the austral summer of 2021-22, bergs in the eastern Weddell Sea drifted south with the Antarctic Coastal Current. Iceberg A-23A– presently the worlds largest iceberg– floated freely after wiggling loose from the seafloor where it had been “grounded” (stuck) for years. And in January 2022, Iceberg D-28 rounded the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue, drifting roughly 4,300 kilometers (2,600 miles) from where it broke devoid of the Amery Ice Shelf in 2019.
The drift of the icebergs has slowed as daytime hours have actually waned and temperatures have dropped, allowing sea ice to begin growing in earnest on the Weddell Sea. The relative heat of seawater behind the icebergs and within leads in the sea ice is obvious in the 2nd image, acquired on March 6 by the Landsat 8 satellite. The coldest areas (white and blue) are older, thicker ice, including the icebergs and damaged ice debris in their courses.
A medley of large bergs ultimately converged near the Brunt Ice Shelf. The image above, obtained on March 6, 2022, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite, shows the bergs as they neared completion of their summer season migration.
The drift of the icebergs has actually slowed as daytime hours have waned and temperatures have actually dropped, allowing sea ice to begin growing in earnest on the Weddell Sea. The bergs will ultimately end up being fully encased in seasonal sea ice for the austral winter season.
More bands of clouds are visible north of the bergs. Clouds like these, understood as cloud streets or convective roll clouds, frequently line up when strong, cold winds blow over relatively warm ocean water.
The relative warmth of seawater behind the icebergs and within leads in the sea ice is apparent in the 2nd image, gotten on March 6 by the Landsat 8 satellite. The coldest locations (white and blue) are older, thicker ice, consisting of the icebergs and damaged ice rubble in their courses.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey, and MODIS information from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Kathryn Hansen with image analysis by Christopher Shuman, NASA/UMBC, and Bart Geerts, University of Wyoming.