September 24, 2015
Pine Island Releases New Iceberg after Austral Winter 2015
Posted by Mauri Pelto
NASA MODIS Image from Sept. 24, 2015 showing new iceberg at calving front of Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica
In the MODIS images from the NASA Rapid Response image sets below you can see the lack of rifting in February, 2015 and April, 2015 that will lead at the calving front where the iceberg will break off that is evident on Sept. 24, 2015. A new iceberg was reported having calved by the US National Ice Center in August, labelled B-35, it was reported to be 12.66 miles (20.4 km) long by 8 miles (12.8 km) wide. The iceberg indicated in the Sept. 24 image is not B-35. It is much smaller than B-31 that broke off in 2013, but is approximately 14 km long and 8 km wide. There are two other icebergs indicated that also broke off over the winter from Pine Island Glacier, into the polyna.
As Operation IceBridge begins its 2015 southern campaign I am sure we will learn much more about this iceberg. Details on the 2013 Calving illustrate a slower process from rift formation to calving. Pine Island Glacier is remains a key glacier that is undergoing rapid change.
[…] A nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke off from the glacier in 2015, but it wasnât until Ohio State University researchers were testing some new image-processing software that they noticed something strange in satellite images taken before the event. […]
[…] at the very base of the ice shelf nearly 20 miles inland. What they also knew is that in 2015 a nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke off from the glacier in 2015 and so this early evidence revealed that the rift they had detected within those 2013 images had […]
[…] at the very base of the ice shelf nearly 20 miles inland. What they also knew is that in 2015 a nearly 225-square-mile iceberg broke off from the glacier in 2015 and so this early evidence revealed that the rift they had detected within those 2013 images […]