Wilkins Ice Shelf Unzipping
Posted by Target on 12/29/2009, 5:59 am
You guys probably know by now that I can get upset when data drops out, especially when I notice something that looks like a hurricane brewing or an unusual SST.

I've been watching the Wilkins Ice Sheet break up for months, almost a year now, and about 2 weeks ago I noticed a crack in a spot that seemed like it would make the next potential ice bridge to be unstable.

I figured I would need just a few more images to be sure but then the European Satellite only took pics in the dark which seems hard to do in an Antarctic Summer.

About a week ago the pics stopped. I hope they return soon ... Maybe they had Christmas off.

Anyway, my view is that the Wilkins Shelf is unzipping and that in general this will continue until large ice sheets on land begin to slide into the sea.

Remember the SST blip over Alaska that stirred me up, was it last Spring? I wonder If the satellite pics were recalibrated to remove that early ice melt. Because local Canadians who tried to actually go out and measure the old ice about a month ago only found dirty stirred up ice.

My guess is that governments may be reluctant to release scary data about our environment; or workers simply don't trust the data when it does not fit into typical forecasts.

If polar temperatures rise by 10F then we could expect to see more raw data which does not fit into typical forecasts.

In the following image there is what looks like a sand dune on the ice shelf. There is a clear crack to the right of it and when the animation was available a crack could also be seen forming to the left of the mound.

Because of the direction that the ice flows from east to west, the island to the west no longer looks like it can hold a stable ice bridge, so the Wilkins Ice Shelf may be headed for a full collapse.


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Wilkins Ice Shelf Unzipping - Target, 12/29/2009, 5:59 am
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