Comments on: A flotilla of icebergs descending on New Zealand http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/25/a-flotilla-of-icebergs-descending-on-new-zealand/ now with extra source Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:46:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Paul Ferraro http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/25/a-flotilla-of-icebergs-descending-on-new-zealand/#comment-48168 Paul Ferraro Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:03:31 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=100842#comment-48168 Suggestion for finetuning the new Crikey format. If an article states that "the berg outbreaks are unlikely to be related to global warming" and if an expert feels himself unqualified to "to speculate on the cause" of the bergs, then perhaps the article shouldn't be tagged with the 'Climate Change' Comment Counter... Suggestion for finetuning the new Crikey format. If an article states that “the berg outbreaks are unlikely to be related to global warming” and if an expert feels himself unqualified to “to speculate on the cause” of the bergs, then perhaps the article shouldn’t be tagged with the ‘Climate Change’ Comment Counter…

]]> By: Ben Sandilands http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/25/a-flotilla-of-icebergs-descending-on-new-zealand/#comment-48158 Ben Sandilands Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:47:01 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=100842#comment-48158 Apparently it can. If the source is huge, some of them have been comparable to Tasmania in breadth if not length, they tend to drift around the fringes of the Antarctica and even running into other other ice shelves or hitting the coastline for a while. They as the crack up, the chunks start to drift north as well as around the far southern ocean until eventually they get into the zone, and down to the size, where rapid melting occurs. Normal ice bergs that just break off in small chunks from an ice shelf never last as long as those that have been found to have been up around 80 kilometres in length or longer. In 1979, on assignment for the Sydney Morning Herald, I went to a dive hole drilled through the Ross Ice Shelf at McMurdo. The underside of the ice the divers were exploring was floating over water super chilled to -8C. There were sub polar corals and other marine life forms down there. But the ice itself is also depressed below zero, and at that stage so cold that for a while as its gets pushed further from shore by the parent glacier it gains mass from the sea freezing onto it. Apparently it can. If the source is huge, some of them have been comparable to Tasmania in breadth if not length, they tend to drift around the fringes of the Antarctica and even running into other other ice shelves or hitting the coastline for a while. They as the crack up, the chunks start to drift north as well as around the far southern ocean until eventually they get into the zone, and down to the size, where rapid melting occurs. Normal ice bergs that just break off in small chunks from an ice shelf never last as long as those that have been found to have been up around 80 kilometres in length or longer.

In 1979, on assignment for the Sydney Morning Herald, I went to a dive hole drilled through the Ross Ice Shelf at McMurdo. The underside of the ice the divers were exploring was floating over water super chilled to -8C. There were sub polar corals and other marine life forms down there. But the ice itself is also depressed below zero, and at that stage so cold that for a while as its gets pushed further from shore by the parent glacier it gains mass from the sea freezing onto it.

]]> By: Evan Beaver http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/11/25/a-flotilla-of-icebergs-descending-on-new-zealand/#comment-48128 Evan Beaver Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:36:29 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=100842#comment-48128 Amazing stuff. Does it really take 6-9 years for an iceberg to make it here from Antarctica? Amazing stuff. Does it really take 6-9 years for an iceberg to make it here from Antarctica?

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