Have you looked at the North Pole lately?

Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf Finally Breaks​

January 24, 2023JPEG



In February 2019, a rift spanning most of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica appeared ready to spawn an iceberg about twice the size of New York City. The question among scientists was not if the growing rift would finish traversing the shelf and break, but when? Now, nearly four years later, it has done just that.
According to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the break occurred late on January 22, 2023, and produced a new iceberg with an area of 1550 square kilometers (about 600 square miles). The U.S. National Ice Center has named it Iceberg A-81. The berg is visible in this image, acquired on January 24, 2023, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
The glacial ice in the shelf flows away from the interior of Antarctica and floats on the eastern Weddell Sea. (For reference, the Antarctic Peninsula and its ice shelves are located on the opposite side of the Weddell.) The shelf has long been home to the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Research Station, where scientists study Earth, atmospheric, and space weather processes. BAS reported that the station, which was relocated farther inland in 2016 as the chasm widened, was unaffected by the recent break.


January 12, 2021


The break occurred along a rift known as Chasm 1. This chasm started growing in the 1970s, followed by a period of dormancy, and then resumed growth in 2012. It continued to lengthen for almost a decade, extending by as much as 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) per year in early 2019. But even this growth spurt slowed. That is, until the 2022–2023 Antarctic summer when the chasm sped up and ultimately broke past the McDonald Ice Rumples—a submerged knob of bedrock that served as a pinning point for this part of the shelf. Several factors may have contributed to the completion of the break, including a lack of sea ice to help resist, or “push back,” against the stresses on the shelf ice in 2023.
The second image, acquired with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows the extent of Chasm 1 on January 12, 2021, about two years prior to the break. Notice several other cracks across the northeast part of the shelf. The “new crack” in that image ultimately separated in February 2021 and formed Iceberg A-74.
“The rapid formation of subsequent rifts—to long-standing Chasm 1 and 2—and recent calving to the northeast makes it clear that these shelf areas are dynamic with poorly understood stresses,” said Christopher Shuman, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County, glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The breaking (calving) of icebergs from ice shelves is part of a natural, cyclical process of growth and decay at the limits of Earth’s ice sheets. As glacial ice flows from land and spreads out over the sea, shelf areas farthest from shore grow thinner. These areas are stressed by storms and tides and thin as they are melted from above or below, ultimately making them more prone to forming rifts and breaking away.

As for the “new” Brunt, it remains to be seen how the complex floating glacial ice responds to the most recent calving event. According to Shuman: “We have no solid idea what ‘normal’ really is for this unusual ice shelf.”

conversation starts at 60 minute mark.

Ep092 Winter Solstice 2012-2022 / Arctic Ice Death Spiral? -Kosmographia The Randall Carlson Podcast​

Icebergs are easier to tow with the big diesels for bottled water at the grocery store when they break. Only right wingers drink it..

The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.97×1024 kg. In bulk, by mass, it is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements.[12]

And it all starts with Hydrogen atoms.

How did the Iron get created ? Element #26 - could it be the result of combining 2 of Element #13 - Aluminum ?

St. Phatty said:

The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.97×1024 kg. In bulk, by mass, it is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements.[12]

And it all starts with Hydrogen atoms.

How did the Iron get created ? Element #26 - could it be the result of combining 2 of Element #13 - Aluminum ?

Click to expand...

Radioactive radium decays to radon which is a gas that decays to polonium 3.8 days and then to lead in another 140 days or so. Until it decays to lead it is releasing beta radioactive particles. Radon gas from underground is pretty common around here in the Midwest where there is coal underground.

Three Berries said:

Radioactive radium decays to radon which is a gas that decays to polonium 3.8 days and then to lead in another 140 days or so. Until it decays to lead it is releasing beta radioactive particles. Radon gas from underground is pretty common around here in the Midwest where there is coal underground.

Click to expand...

a Beta particle is simply a fast moving electron.

Not good to get hit by too many, lest the elements in your body decide to become a different element or isotope.

But it can be stopped with simple metal foil.

Semi-related is this guy's explanation of Helion's version of Fusion, which fuses Deuterium & Helium 3, instead of Deuterium & Tritium, as the ITER Tokamak feeds on.

St. Phatty said:

a Beta particle is simply a fast moving electron.

Not good to get hit by too many, lest the elements in your body decide to become a different element or isotope.

But it can be stopped with simple metal foil.

Semi-related is this guy's explanation of Helion's version of Fusion, which fuses Deuterium & Helium 3, instead of Deuterium & Tritium, as the ITER Tokamak feeds on.

Click to expand...

I was interested in seeing that lead is the short term product of the decay. Which I guess too would then also be stopped by the metal foil.

Three Berries said:

I was interested in seeing that lead is the short term product of the decay. Which I guess too would then also be stopped by the metal foil.

Click to expand...

This is one of the questions that is left un-answered in the Intro Semester Nuclear class at MIT. #22-12

They do a whole bunch of calculations about neutrons striking a Uranium nucleus, or ANY nucleus, but the calculations are done for a free-standing Nucleus atom.

Not a Uranium nucleus that is part of a chunk of Uranium metal, or a Uranium Oxide fuel pellet.

It seems to have been removed from the OCW MIT website.

and good evening to the assembly of the climatically interested
antarctic ice out is at record low for this time of year
an all time record low seems likely, but that's just my humble opinion - official notice tbd
but the arctic is getting weird, ice coverage actually receded a bit in January
melt? be skeptical of that but it sure isn't making ice like it should
climate drama, could be an el nino this year and a quite warm summer

This year in South Australia the summer has been mild, no days over 40C and lots of rain, it has been raining for the last few days.
So much for climate change.

do you expect extremities every day? "no blizzard, no hurricane, i guess climate change is bullshit..."

One of the interesting things about man-made Climate Change is how SOME of its effects offset each other.

Increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces ocean pH, and creates a BIG problem for animals that make their shells from Calcium Carbonate, e.g. Coral Crabs Clams etc.

BUT the melting glaciers & ice-caps add fresh water to the mix, and help to dilute the ocean, slightly slowing down the acidification.

BUT #2 - if there was a global dimming event, e.g. major volcanic eruption or nuclear war, that would lower temperatures & increase rate of ice formation.

Then there would be a double whammy, as less seafood + reduced crop growth on land hits home.

People can't live on MRE's. I have or had a friend who tried it & he kind of went nuts, or lost about 30 IQ points.

Preppers need to make sure their food stores contain balanced nutrition.

One article I read described normal ocean pH as being about 8.0, i.e. slightly alkaline, so the term "ocean acidification" needs to be qualified.

igrowone said:

and good evening to the assembly of the climatically interested
antarctic ice out is at record low for this time of year
an all time record low seems likely, but that's just my humble opinion - official notice tbd
but the arctic is getting weird, ice coverage actually receded a bit in January
melt? be skeptical of that but it sure isn't making ice like it should
climate drama, could be an el nino this year and a quite warm summer

Click to expand...

are you certain the ice loss isn't a result of the Brandt ice shelf breaking away?
because it's still pretty cold down there...

more information below:

and a follow up on the arctc/antarctic ice levels
looks like the arctic is not record low, #2 lowest, here's the nsidc statement

Arctic sea ice low, Antarctic lower
February 6, 2023
Arctic sea ice extent rose at a slower than average rate through January, and continued to be below the lower interdecile range. By the end of the month, sea ice reached the second lowest extent in the satellite record. Meanwhile, Antarctic extent remained at record low levels. Combined, the two hemispheres set a record low for total global sea ice extent, yet this does not signify a trend necessarily and may be caused by weather-related variability.

The Southern Hemisphere finally got some wildfires !

Nothing to celebrate, but the news media normally completely ignores the Southern Hemisphere.

well, folks in Chile prob don't care about Buffalo's lake-effect snow, either...

Antarctic sea ice extent sets a new record low
February 14, 2023
Antarctic sea ice extent appears to have broken the record low set last year. With a couple more weeks likely left in the melt season, the extent is expected to drop further before reaching its annual minimum. Much of the Antarctic coast is ice free, exposing the ice shelves that fringe the ice sheet to wave action and warmer conditions.

Study Finds Zero Loss of Antarctica Sea Ice – But BBC Spins as “New Record Low”​

Chris Morrison
21 February 2023 1:00 PM



The catastrophisation of natural events and weather is relentless across the mainstream media as populations continue to be nudged towards an elitist command-and-control Net Zero future. The BBC recently copied a headline from the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) claiming Antarctica sea ice had hit a “new record low”. Inexplicably missing from the story was the later observation from the NSIDC that since accurate satellite records began in 1979, the trend in the minimum ice extent is “near zero”. Any loss was said to be “not statistically significant”.
To be fair to the writer, BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos, he did report later in the story that scientists consider the behaviour of Antarctica sea ice to be a “complicated phenomenon which cannot simply be ascribed to climate change”. Of course, as regular Daily Sceptic readers are aware, the Antarctic is a difficult hunting ground for climate catastrophists since over the last seven decades there has been little or no warming over large areas of the continent.

According to a recent paper (Singh and Polvani), the Antarctica sea ice has “modestly expanded”, and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet. According to NASA figures, the ice loss is 0.0005% per year. Down at the South Pole, even the most inventive climate alarmists are defeated. In 2021 it recorded its coldest six-month winter since records began, and last year the temperature was 0.4°C colder than the average over the last 30 years. In addition, the Pole recorded no less than seven new daily temperature lows.
The map above shows some warming in the western part of Antarctica, and it is to this area that climate warriors return – again and again. The day before his sea ice story was published, Amos ran with a routine BBC house scare about the Thwaites glacier, often known in green circles as the ‘Doomsday Glacier’. Amos states that glaciers such as Thwaites located in the west may be more sensitive to changes in sea temperature than was thought. “Its susceptibility to climate change is a major concern to scientists because if it melted completely, it would raise global sea levels by half a metre,” he said.
Many of the problems surrounding the unproven hypothesis of human-caused global warming is that it often fails to correlate with observable reality. Why would well-mixed atmospheric carbon dioxide produce a relative warm spot in Antarctica, but leave the rest of the vast continent in a static deep freeze? In 2017, scientists discovered 91 volcanoes in the West Antarctica Rift System. It brought the number of volcanoes discovered in the area to 138. Their heights ranged from 300 to 12,600 feet, with the tallest as high as Mount Fuji in Japan. The scientists noted that even dormant volcanoes can melt ice because of the high temperature they generate. “Volcanic activity may increase and this, in turn, may lead to enhanced water production and contribute to further potential ice-dynamical instability,” the scientists stated.
Again, to be fair to Amos, he does consider other causes of Antarctica ice stability, although the article is headlined “climate change”. His reporting is mercifully free of the emotional gushings produced by the BBC’s green activist-in-residence Justin Rowlatt. When Rowlatt flew to the area, he witnessed “an epic vision of shattered ice”. To him, the Antarctic is the “frontline of climate change”. Amos does note that Thwaites, a glacier the size of Florida, has retreated in some places by 14 km since the late 1990s. But such movement does not seem unusual. Recently a group of oceanographers discovered that parts of Thwaites had retreated at twice the rate in the past, when human-caused CO2 could not have been a factor. The retreat could have occurred centuries ago, and is said to have been “exceptionally fast”.
Meanwhile, research has just been published that indicates Antarctica could have been warmer in the recent past from 7,000 to 500 years ago. This type of research is always interesting since it helps debunks a common claim made by alarmists that current temperatures are the highest over the last three million years. But numerous scientific studies have shown that temperatures across the planet have been much warmer for recent periods in the Holocene. This latest study in Antarctica found remains of elephant seals along the Victoria Land Coast of the Ross Embayment, which borders both the West and East Antarctic ice sheets. These days, the area is largely free of elephant seals because of shelves of permanent sea ice frozen to the beaches. It is suggested that seals were able to occupy the beaches in a period of warmth before extensive sea ice pushed them off the present day coast.
“Our work shows that for much of the Holocene, the Ross Sea was less icy and presumably warmer than it is today, and this warmth may have driven retreat of the West Antarctica ice sheet from the Ross Sea during the last 8,000 years, and future warming could continue to push ice retreat,” conclude the researchers.
For climate alarmists, the ice is the gift that keeps on giving – every day is a “new record low”.