The world’s largest iceberg
And why the world isn’t interested
One month ago news sites across the globe featured reports that a giant Antarctic iceberg was “hanging by a thread”, only to report now that this block of ice has now detached itself into it’s own iceberg.
The iceberg itself is twice the size of Luxembourg and weighs over 1 trillion tonnes — quite a substantial amount! But despite all of this, over one day, after it’s detachment into it’s own mass the world has forgotten what could have been a weeks worth of news given current opinions about environmental issues.
This article will delve deeper into the cause behind the iceberg calving and also the potential reasons why the world has so quickly forgotten about this iceberg in particular.
Why did the ice break off?
The story of ice beginning to crack and break off from the larger ice sheet stems from a process that goes back thousands of years from when the iceberg calving occurs. Initial cracks in the ice are caused due to ablation, typically where melting occurs at low altitudes and disruption, due to pressure builds up within the ice itself. Both processes tend to be present when ice is expanding, most notably with a change in temperature and hence why climate change is particularly prolific in causing significant iceberg calving.
This iceberg reduced the size of it’s adjacent ice shelf (Larsen’s Ice Shelf) by 12% of it’s area, which if you were to tell the public would cause a serious amount of worry.
Researcher’s are noting the effect’s that the calving event may have on the dynamic of the ice shelf due to the considerable change in shape and potential new sea patterns around the shelf itself. In the end it wasn’t a simple break — data collected just days before the iceberg calved by the Swansea University and a team on the UK’s Midas project revealed that the rift had branched multiple times.
“We see one large [iceberg] for now. It is likely that this will break into smaller pieces as time goes by,” said Adrian Luckman, professor of glaciology at Swansea and leader of the Midas project
The significance of the iceberg
News outlets were swift to note how experts commented on how it won’t directly cause a sea level rise, which many then correlate to it not being caused by climate change. But the public should pay attention to how this event was reported and try to understand for themselves the significance.
This calving event comes merely months after Donald Trump began the processes of revoking the USA from the Paris Climate Change Agreement signed in 2015. This should spark a warning that the Earth is volatile and we should be weary that news especially scientific news is taking into account all events equally. Regardless that the initial thoughts that this event was not directly caused by Humans other similar events may be. Nature may have the same effect as we Humans.
“Everyone loves a good iceberg, and this one is a corker,” said Andrew Shepherd, professor of Earth Observation at the University of Leeds
Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes. Scientists aren’t worrying too much due to the prolific rate at which Antarctica is losing ice anyway through calving and similar processes. For them it’s business as usual.
This lack of scientific response or worry has led the media to not focus it’s efforts into tackling this story properly. Highly rated news sites were showing off incredible flight imagery showing the iceberg with many incorporating key stats telling us (the public) how large the iceberg was. Not many used this opportunity to help educate and teach people that the changing climate and nature of our planet, despite creating spectacles, are volatile and potentially dangerous.
The media and nature
Often companies use events like this to scare readers, to gain leverage and sell news. After all news like this does sell. Imagine being able to tell all of your readership that scientists are particularly worried about the effects that this iceberg will have on our planet.
I guess at the moment they aren’t able to do this, as research will now be undertaken by teams across the world to try to establish a firm understanding of how the iceberg calving event took place, it’s impacts on the planet and perhaps more importantly whether an event like this could happen again.
This was an incredible environmental spectacle with the true power of ice being on display. We witnessed something truly amazing and yet only those interested in ice and science are those focussed on the news. My one hope, individually, is that schools and educational facilities can use this event to inspire a new generation of scientists and begin to further unravel the mysteries of climate change. After all it can’t be long until events like this begin to happen more frequently?
