Weddell Sea
| Use attributes for filter ! | |
| Area | 28 |
|---|---|
| Islands | James Ross |
| Berkner | |
| Laurie Island | |
| Coronation Island | |
| Powell Island | |
| Date of Reg. | |
| Date of Upd. | |
| ID | 2230304 |
About Weddell Sea
The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha Coast, Queen Maud Land.
Sir David Attenborough polar ship has monster iceberg encounter
... But during the past year, currents and winds have driven the frozen block rapidly across the Weddell Sea...
A23a: World's biggest iceberg on the move after 30 years
... A23a, as it s called, calved from the Antarctic coastline in 1986, but almost immediately grounded in the Weddell Sea to become, essentially, an ice island...
Antarctica sea-ice hits new record low
... Only the Weddell Sea remains dominated by frozen floes...
Endurance: 'Finest wooden shipwreck I've ever seen'
...Endurance, the lost ship of Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, has finally been identified on the floor of Antarctica s Weddell Sea...
Shackleton's Endurance: The impossible search for the greatest shipwreck
... The frozen floes that squeezed, snapped and then swallowed his polar steam yacht in the Weddell Sea between October and November 1915 smother its grave and protect it from discovery...
How a colossal block of ice became an obsession
... It s now entered the Weddell Sea which is directly south of the Atlantic Ocean...
Anyone ever Shackleton found lost the ship?
... This is the conclusion of scientists to find the, the endurance, which sank in 3,000 m of water in the Weddell Sea in 1915...
315 billion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica
... This is roughly Amery to the Eastern Weddell Sea...
A23a: World's biggest iceberg on the move after 30 years
By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent
The world's biggest iceberg is on The Move after More Than 30 years being stuck to The Ocean floor.
A23a, as it's called, calved from the Antarctic coastline in 1986, but almost immediately grounded in the Weddell Sea to become, essentially, an Ice Island .
At almost 4,000 sq km (1,500 sq miles) in area, it's More Than twice the size of Greater London .
The Past year has seen it drifting at speed, and the berg is now about to spill beyond Antarctic waters.
A23a is a true colossus, and it's not just its width That impresses.
This slab of ice is some 400m (1,312 ft) thick. For comparison, the London Shard, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, is a mere 310m tall.
A23a was part of a mass outbreak of bergs from the White Continent's Filchner Ice Shelf .
At The Time , it was hosting a Soviet research station, which just illustrates how long ago its calving occurred.
Moscow despatched an expedition to remove equipment from the Druzhnaya 1 base, fearing it would be lost. But the tabular berg didn't move far from the coast before its deep keel anchored it rigidly to the Weddell's bottom-muds.
So, why, after almost 40 Years , is A23a on The Move now?
" I asked a couple of colleagues about this, wondering if there was any possible change in shelf Water temperatures That might have provoked it, but the consensus is The Time had just come, " said Dr Andrew Fleming , a Remote Sensing expert from The British Antarctic Survey.
" It was grounded since 1986 but eventually it was going to decrease (in size) sufficiently to lose grip and start moving. I spotted first movement back in 2020. "
A23a has put on a spurt in recent months, driven by winds and currents, and is now passing the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula .
Like most icebergs from the Weddell sector, A23a will almost certainly be ejected into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which will throw it towards The South Atlantic on a path That has become known as " iceberg alley".
This is the same movement of Water - and accompanying westerlies - That the famous explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton exploited in 1916 to make his escape from Antarctica following The Loss of his ship, the Endurance, in crushing sea-ice.
Shackleton aimed his lifeboat for South Georgia, and it's at this island That you will frequently see the big tabular bergs sitting offshore. The blocks' keels mean they have a tendency to get pinned on The British Overseas Territory's shallow Continental Shelf .
Eventually, all bergs, however big, are doomed to melt and wither away.
Scientists will be following A23a's progress closely.
If it does ground at South Georgia, it might cause problems for The Millions of seals, penguins and other seabirds That breed on The Island . A23a's great bulk could disrupt The Animals ' normal foraging routes, preventing them from feeding their young properly.
But it would be wrong to think of icebergs as being just objects of Danger - Titanic and All That . There's a growing recognition of their importance to the wider environment.
As these big bergs melt, they release the mineral dust That was incorporated into their ice when they were part of glaciers scraping along The Rock bed of Antarctica. This dust is a source of nutrients for the organisms That form The Base of ocean Food Chains .
" In many ways these icebergs are life-giving; they are The Origin point for a lot of biological activity, " said Dr Catherine Walker , from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was born in the same year as A23a. " I identify with it; it's always been there for me. "
Related TopicsSource of news: bbc.com
