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Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:53 am Post subject: Storm in Alaska Breaks Iceberg - in Antarctic |
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Alaskan storm cracks iceberg in Antarctica, study says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A bad storm in Alaska last October generated an ocean swell that broke apart a giant iceberg near Antarctica six days later, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The waves traveled 8,300 miles (13,500 km) to destroy the iceberg, said Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago and Emile Okal at Northwestern University.
Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, they said their study shows how weather in one region can affect events far away.
"One of the things we're debating in the world right now is whether global warming might increase the storminess in the oceans," MacAyeal said in a statement. "The question we then pose is: Could global storminess have an influence on the Antarctic ice sheet that had never been thought of?"
The researchers were watching icebergs using satellite images and saw that on a clear, calm day last October, a big iceberg known as B15A broke into half a dozen pieces. "I was surprised at the level of amplitude that we were recording," Okal said. The researchers figured a storm somewhere may have generated waves, which are known to travel long distances.
They did some calculations and saw the swell must have come from more than 8,000 miles or 13,500 km away. "Our jaws dropped," MacAyeal said. "We looked in the Pacific Ocean and there, 13,500 kilometers away, six days earlier, was the winter season's first really big, nasty storm that developed and lasted for about a day and a half in the Gulf of Alaska."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10/02/iceberg.cracks.reut/index.html |
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