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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Iceberg Smashes Off a Chunk of Antarctica

This is quite an event to be witnessing...

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Summary - (Apr 18, 2005)

Scientists have been watching a huge iceberg called B-15A, after it split away from Antarctica almost 5 years ago. After drifting along the coast of the continent, it finally smashed into the 70 km Drygalski ice tongue, breaking off a large chunk. The ice tongue is such a well known feature of Antarctica that it appears on many maps (they'll need to be revised). B-15A, on the other hand, appears totally unaffected by the collision, and will continue to grind away at the tongue.

More here: www.universetoday.com/am/publish/b15_smashes_icetongue.html?1842005

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What a ride it would have been perched on the iceberg as it smashed against Antartica!

[Maddad]

Gezum crow! That chunk broken off is about five kilometers wide and ten kilometers long!

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16759
I remember following the B-15A iceberg for several years. It's so much bigger than most that it's not melting very fast for its size. It looks to be about 100 kilometers long in this picture, although this site ( www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325235440.htm ) lists it at 120 km. A 30 kilometer hunk of it broke off on October 7, 2003 ( earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16332 ).

www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/coldscience/2005-01-20-berg-5-12-2002_x.htm
The depth of B-15A should be about 1,000 feet or 300 meters, according to this site. Since one of these sites lists the surface area of the berg as 11,655 square kilometers, it should contain 3,500 cubic kilometers (3.5 trillion cubic meters [tons]) of fresh water. Tow that rascal to the Middle East!

[Centaur]

Maddad said:

Tow that rascal to the Middle East!

I've got a pontoon boat with a 70 HP motor. Do you think it can do the job?

[Maddad]

Can you get a second one to cut the transport time in half?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

IceBerg Derby...

This hunk of ice has an attitude and is about ready to smash into another one again...

From Universe Today:

May 17, 2005 - Just a few weeks after smashing a chunk off Drygalski ice tongue, iceberg B-15A is still wreaking havoc off the coast of Antarctica.

Now it's about to crash into the Aviator Glacier - a 25 km (16 mile) long spear of ice stretching into the ocean. The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite captured this image of B-15A just a few kilometres away from the crash. B-15A is the world's largest free floating object, which has been afloat for more than 5 years now, since it calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000.

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It would be a great thing to capture as it smashes...watching it and hearing the crunch would be quite cool!

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Envisat Shows Behemoth B-15A Iceberg Breaking Up

Paris (ESA) Nov 08, 2005

After five years of being the world's largest free-floating object, the B-15A iceberg has broken into smaller pieces off Antarctica's Cape Adare.
ESA's Envisat satellite's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) is sensitive to ice, and has been tracking the movement of the drifting ice object continuously since the beginning of this year. Its latest imagery reveals the bottle-shaped iceberg split into nine knife-shaped icebergs and a myriad of smaller pieces on 27-28 October, the largest being formed by fractures along the long axis of the original single iceberg.

Measuring – until last week - around 115 kilometres in length with an area exceeding 2500 square kilometres, the B-15A tabular iceberg had apparently run aground off Cape Adare, the northernmost corner of the Victoria Land Coast. This stranding appears to have led to flexing and straining which resulted in the break-up.

More here: www.spacedaily.com/news/icebergs-05h.html

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This chunk of Ice had a wild life, but it's not over yet!

[Rocketman]

Envisat. I use to see it all of the time. I wish I could get pictures from Envisat, Ikonos, Landsat, TRMM... but they are all secret.

70 hp without beer, no. 70 hp with beer, definately!