Icebergs

Kristin Schild getting back in the helicopter after deploying a GPS tracker on the surface of one of the icebergs in 2019. Credit: Mark Carey Over the last four decades, warming climate and ocean temperatures have rapidly altered the Greenland Ice Sheet, creating concern for marine ecosystems and weather patterns worldwide. The environment has challenged scientists in their attempts to measure how water moves around and melts…

An artist’s rendition of Titan’s landscape features a hazy atmosphere, dark dunes, and mirror-smooth lakes and seas that resemble Earth’s. On these bodies of liquid hydrocarbons, new research suggests that the appearance of “magic islands” may be caused by floating organic solids. Credit: NASA/JPL Saturn’s largest moon rains and snows ethane, methane, and fancier organic compounds. On the ground, accumulated chunks may calve like glaciers at the edges of the moon’s methane lakes, forming ephemeral, floating “magic…

What’s white, weighs roughly one trillion metric tons, and is now heading away from the Antarctic Peninsula? If you guessed iceberg A23a, you’re absolutely right, as this colossal chunk of snow and ice is finally leaving the cradle.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie Iceberg A23a managed to dislodge itself from the ocean floor in November 2023, but its story actually began 37 years earlier. West Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Sheet birthed the behemoth in 1986, but shortly after its emergence, iceberg A23a…

Researchers are using machine learning to analyze satellite radar data to detect icebergs in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica as a way to better understand their life cycle and environmental impact.Icebergs may seem like something exotic and far away, but, as anyone who's seen Titanic can tell you, they can dramatically impact us when we least expect it. Only last week, the world's largest iceberg, called A23a, which is over twice as big as Greater London, broke free from the seabed after being stranded for almost…

Frequencies of iceberg prediction within 50 run ensembles for four austral seasons. Note contrasting ranges of values. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2019–2020. Credit: Remote Sensing of Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2023.113780 Researchers are using a new AI tool to detect icebergs in the Southern Ocean. This is the first step in being able to track the complete life cycle of most icebergs across…

Image 1 shows the U-net algorithm correctly identifying the iceberg, which is highlighted in red. In comparison, the k-means algorithm has incorrectly identified a cluster of smaller icebergs and ice fragments, shown in blue, as one large iceberg. That is revealed in image 2. Credit: Dr Anne Braakmann-Folgmann and the European Space Agency. Scientists have trained an artificial intelligence (AI) system to accurately map—in…

One of the major benefits of certain artificial intelligence models is that they can speed up menial or time-consuming tasks —- and not just to whip up terrible "art" based on a brief text input. University of Leeds researchers have unveiled a neural network that they claim can map an outline of a large iceberg in just 0.01 seconds.Scientists are able to track the locations of large icebergs manually. After all, one that was included in this study was the size of Singapore when it broke off from Antarctica a decade ago.…

Late in the evening of April 14 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the north-west Atlantic. In just over two and a half hours, the Titanic sank, claiming the lives of 1,514 people. The Titanic disaster is one good reason to understand icebergs better. But their significance extends far beyond posing a risk to ships and other offshore structures. Icebergs are crucial to monitor because of their…

A man from the town of Dildo, Canada captured images of a remarkable penis-shaped iceberg off the country’s east coast. The natural wonder set off a viral frenzy, but sadly seems to have since lost its rounded tip. Mississippi’s Water Crisis | Extreme EarthCanadian photographer Ken Pretty took the photos with his drone on April 27. “I heard about the iceberg through a group on Facebook called Newfoundland Iceberg Reports, where people were commenting on the unique characteristics of the iceberg,” he told Earther in an…

Ultraviolet light, found in sunshine, then triggers that chemical breakdown in the concentrated pollutants. Without it, the compounds remain relatively inert, like the food in your freezer. But under UV illumination, “by and large, we see faster rates of decay in ice than we do in water,” says Halsall. These accelerated decay rates may play out more noticeably in ice at the poles, where “you can have 24 hours of sunlight at certain portions of the year,” says Grannas. “That drives a lot of chemistry.”Microplastics,…