James Raymond Reese

I have actually seen some ill-informed posters try to link this iceberg to Global Warming.

The iceberg getting a lot of coverage this week actually broke loose from the Ross Ice Shelf about ten years ago. This is common. There are several ice shelves, very large ones, that spread out over the ocean from the actual coastline of the southern polar continent. At some point, the actions of the underlying ocean currents are too much for the ice to withstand and chunks break off. Scientists call this "calving."

(Another aside here. Antarctic ice has been increasing at a rate of about one percent per year since scientists began making measurements.)

Usually, this calving results in a few larger bergs and hundreds of smaller ones as the ice breaks from the shelf. And, occasionally, there is a real whopper of an ice chunk that fails to further break up.

That is what happened to the once-again-famous iceberg B17B. (There were also smaller bergs from this chunk: B17A and B17C.) B17B is now about 12 miles long as it floats to the north.

This is nothing compared to its original size. When B17B started on its voyage, it was 190 miles long and 30 miles wide. For a better comparison, that's roughly the size of Connecticut!

So, now you know...and won't allow the scare-mongers to influence your thinking.

By the way, the picture attached to this article is NOT B171B. This one is floating off Macquarie Island, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica and is believed to be a smaller chuck of the same breakaway ice that formed B17B.

The iceberg pictured is "only" a mile long.