14 DAY TRIAL // People living on an island of New Zealand were puzzled to discover one morning a large number of icebergs floating off their coasts. The ice blocks, more than a hundred of them, came all the way from Antarctica, according to a group of researchers, and it may be that they were set adrift more than 9 years ago. During this time, they've made their way towards New Zealand. A single cluster of the formations was seen sporting a hundred ice bergs, but experts say that more clusters such as this may be on the way, LiveScience reports.
“The larger icebergs seen from Macquarie Island are tabular in shape, which indicates they have calved relatively recently, probably from one of the massive icebergs which originally calved from the Ross Ice Shelf nearly 9 years ago,” explained, in a statement earlier this month, Neal Young. The expert is a glaciologist at the Australian Antarctic Division. He explains that most likely the large number of small ice block come from larger pieces that disintegrated some time ago, after breaking off from the original Antarctic ice shelf.
The ices again raise the problem of global warming in the most direct manner possible. Due to warming waters at the South Pole, a large number of ice sheets are dwindling in size fast, shedding huge blocks of frozen water into the ocean. They drift for a few years, but then they completely melt, contributing to rising sea levels globally. The situation is not unique to Antarctica. The same thing can be observed at the North Pole and in Greenland as well. If these ice spreads melt, we could be looking at a significant reshaping of the world's map. Millions of people currently live in coastal areas, just in the path of future floods.
“Everyone on station has their eyes glued to the horizon trying to spot new icebergs. The scientists working on the southern tip of the island were astounded to see an iceberg of about 2 kilometers [1.2 miles] in length,” adds Macquarie Island acting station leader Cyril Munro. “It is very rare to see icebergs from Macquarie Island. It is uncommon to find icebergs in this general region. But it is not unusual in that icebergs will drift northwards through the region from time to time,” adds in a statement the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center.