by wildcherry on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | News, World | No Comments

An iceberg nearly 87 square miles in size and weighing 200 billion tonnes is drifting towards Australia.
The whopping ice slab, which is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong - or half the size of the Isle of Wight - was picked up using satellite imagery. Its very existence is being hailed as once-in-a-century event.
It’s already far closer to Australia than icebergs normally travel, about 1700km south-southwest of Western Australia.

Glaciologist Neal Young said he was not aware of such a large iceberg being found in the area since the days when 19th century clipper ships sailed the trade routes between Britain and Australia.

Mr Young added that the iceberg, known as B17B, was originally thought to measure about three times its current size, but then broke into two smaller pieces.
He said: ‘This one has survived in the open ocean for about a year. In that time its slowly been coming up to the north and north east in the general direction of Western Australia.’
The sighting of the floating behemoth comes after two massive icebergs were spotted further east, off Australia’s Macquarie Island, followed by more than 100 smaller ice chunks heading for New Zealand.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234497/Iceberg-twice-size-Hong-Kong-spotted-drifting-south-Australia.html#ixzz0ZL8ij0QT

Tags: B17B, iceberg, iceberg australia

by nate on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | News, Weird, World | No Comments

More than 100, and possibly hundreds, of Antarctic icebergs are floating towards New Zealand in a rare event which has prompted a shipping warning, officials said on Monday.

Scientist Neal Young said more than 100 icebergs – some measuring more than 200 metres (650 feet) across – were seen in just one cluster, indicating there could be hundreds more.

He said they were the remains of a massive ice floe which split from the Antarctic as sea and air temperatures rise due to global warming.

“All of these have come from a larger one that was probably 30 square kilometres (11.6 square miles) in size when it left Antarctica,” Young told AFP.

“It’s done a long circuit around Antarctica and now the bigger parts of it are breaking up and producing smaller ones.”

He said large numbers of icebergs had not floated this close to New Zealand since 2006, when a number came within 25 kilometres of the coastline – the first such sighting since 1931.

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Tags: Australian's iceberg, end of world, flood, global warming, Global Warming Signs, iceberg, New Zealand's iceberg