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Scientists: March 11 tsunami produced Antarctic icebergs
The tsunami spawned from the March 11 earthquake off eastern Japan broke up parts of an Antarctic ice shelf that hadn't moved in 46 years, scientists say.
Though the tsunami waves were only about a foot high when they reached Antarctica, their consistency was enough to crack the 260-foot-thick ice and split off icebergs with combined surface areas more than twice the size of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, the scientists report in a NASA statement.
It was the first time scientists have been able to tie icebergs directly to a tsunami, according to NASA.
The tsunami waves traveled 8,000 miles and took 18 hours to reach the ice shelf, the scientists said, giving them time to validate theories on how an earthquake can affect geography a hemisphere away.
"In the past we've had calving events where we've looked for the source. It's a reverse scenario - we see a calving and we go looking for a source," Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the NASA statement. "We knew right away this was one of the biggest events in recent history - we knew there would be enough swell. And this time we had a source."
Emile Okal at Northwestern University and Douglas MacAyeal at the University of Chicago collaborated in the study.
"This is an example not only of the way in which events are connected across great ranges of oceanic distance, but also how events in one kind of Earth system, i.e., the plate tectonic system, can connect with another kind of seemingly unrelated event: the calving of icebergs from Antarctica's ice sheet," MacAyeal said in the NASA statement.
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I love how everyone is blaming "global warming" for earthquakes and tsunamis... CLASSIC!
If you guys would pick up a book every now and again, you would learn that tectonics is totally un-related. Then again, an argument about it with anyone that thinks this is like having an intellectual conversation with a monkey. You may now go back to your regularly scheduled throwing of the poo.
My farts are causing Global Warming 😀
It's Bush's fault.
Actually, scratch that... emmissions from volcanoes do attribute to global warming... we are all going to die!!!!
Can't we ban volcanoes?
""In the past we've had calving events where we've looked for the source. It's a reverse scenario – we see a calving and we go looking for a source," Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland"
Gee, Kelly, isn't that the same thing?
Kelly is a "cryosphere specialist". Why can't she write or speak intelligibly? Maybe she meant to say that the "reverse event" is a source, after which they look for the consequences (calving event). I'm only guessing........
It is perfectly intelligible to me (and I'm not even a cryosphere specialist). What Kelly means is that in the past, they have followed a reverse scenario where they first observe the calving of ice and then look for what may have caused it (an event in the recent PAST). This time, they knew the Tsunami was a major event, and they had the time and the luxury of tracking it. They observed the calving after the tsunami, which allowed them to link the cause and effect more directly.
ok the troll references have gone far enough. As king of the Trolls i declare it be known as the "T" word.
Sorry, that's already taken for the teabaggers.
Maybe global warming caused the earthquake : )
So, how bad would it be if an earthquake happened under the Antarctic snow caps?
This was a result of Bush and his oil business cronies. Sorry, thats just the only excuse I have for everything.
And here I thought it was all about Global Warming.
global warming caused the earthquake lol
come on ... Chuck Norris did that
I heard that HARRP technology caused the earthquake and tsunami.
Global cooling!
Global drooling!
DOH! Now that Homer Simpson has gotten his comment out of the way....it's pretty amazing that we witness in our lifetime such catastrophic events.
grateful I didn't have to experience something so "amazing" firsthand.
Love this article!
Great story!
poop caused it