Mertz Glacier

The Mertz Glacier is a protruding into the ocean glaciers on the Antarctic continent. It lies in the claimed area of Australia Victoria Land directly on the southern ocean. In February 2010, he was rammed in a rare "Century Collision" by a gigantic iceberg and broke in two.

Naming

In December 1911, the Australasian Antarctic expedition started under the leadership of the Australian geologist Douglas Mawson. The aim of the expedition was the first mapping of about 2,000 kilometers of the Australian continent facing coastline. Furthermore, the expedition of exploration and research served previously unknown terrains, also the first meteorite found in Antarctica comes from this expedition.

In November 1912 began three polar explorers - the Australian Mawson, Xavier Mertz of the Swiss and British Belgrave Ninnis - a multi-week exploration of King George V land by dog sled. On December 14, 1912 Ninnis fell into a crevasse, and with him six dogs and most of the meals. Mawson and Mertz then broke from exploring and trying to return to the base camp about 500 kilometers distant. The first glacier, which they crossed on the return trip, they called Ninnis Glacier. As the two researchers had no more food available, they had on their way back in successive steps kill the sled dogs and eat in order to survive. Mertz complained from 1 January 1913 abdominal pain and could not continue on the path on their own. Mawson had to be transported to the slide him from now on. Mertz was 150 km in front of the base camp into delirium and died on 7 January 1913. Crossed the next glacier named after the late Mawson Mertz. Mawson himself reached the base camp on February 8, 1913.

Initially it was thought that vitamin A toxicity ( hypervitaminosis A) at Mertz, which was caused by the consumption of dog liver. According to recent studies, it takes but today that the hitherto strictly living as a vegetarian and related to the emergency situation under heavy mental stress researchers could not tolerate the conversion to now completely carnal food.

Glaciology

Glaciers are huge masses of ice that are located on land or snow and move independently due to the slope, the structure of the ice, the temperature and the resulting from the mass of ice shear stress. Floating in the water ice are no glaciers, but icebergs. Glaciers exist - like icebergs - from fresh water.

The Mertz Glacier is located in the Eastern Antarctic, in quadrant C. It is around 3,100 miles from the Australian mainland coast and around 2,500 kilometers from New Zealand. The expansion of the Mertz Glacier was about 160 kilometers in north-south direction and at about 35 to 40 kilometers wide in east-west direction. More than half sticking out his tongue as a peninsula -like into the open sea. The height of the glacier is about 400 meters; it flows at a speed of one kilometer per year into the sea and transported here every year ten to twelve billion tons of ice into the ocean. The glacier tongue took around 70 years to make to their size. 20 years ago, an approximately 25 -kilometer cross- crack had been discovered. This crevasse was about 50 to 100 meters wide. A second crevasse was created in 2002 by these two plans of extending into the ocean part of the glacier was already loosened.; both cracks had recently almost connected.

Collision

Collision

One of the biggest icebergs of Antarctica, the approximately 95 km long B -9B was canceled in 1987 by the Ross Ice Shelf and sat since 1992, some 100 kilometers east of the Mertz Glacier firmly aground. After he broke up in February 2010, he drove to the glacier. On February 12 or 13, 2010, the iceberg rammed then into the sea outstanding glacier tongue. The glacier broke apart then into two major parts. The fixed part is still in the country, while the broken part of the glacier with around 78 kilometers in length and about 39 miles wide now forming a new iceberg. He has 2,500 square kilometers on the size of Luxembourg and weighs around 700 billion tons. Both the older iceberg B -9B and the recently created iceberg drift now about 100 to 150 kilometers off the Antarctic coast. Such collisions happen very rarely, they occur only once every 50 to 100 years. Therefore Eiskarambolage is also called " the century of collision ."

Name

Initially, the new iceberg was described by Australian Antarctic explorers unofficially as Mertz iceberg. He then was named C- 28th The name assigned by the National Ice Center in Maryland, USA since 1976 for icebergs that are greater than ten nautical miles, or about 19 ​​km and move in a certain proximity to the Antarctic. The letter C is determined by one of the four quadrants in the Antarctica is divided and from which the iceberg comes. The C -28 is 28 iceberg that has emerged since 1976 in the C quadrant.

Effects

If the two giant icebergs deducted north towards Australia, its impact would be low. The two ice giants have remained in the vicinity of the Antarctic and driven into a previously ice-free zone. This ice-free zones will be more involved in the formation of very cold and salty water that sinks into the depths because of its density and gravity. This creates a gigantic circulation of water masses. This in turn affects global climate and weather by the Antarctic regulates the water temperature and supplies the oceans with cold, oxygenated water. About 20 to 25 percent of that cold Antarctic deep water produced in the region around the Mertz Glacier and transported from there by the currents. A disturbance of the existing natural flow due to blockage of the ice-free zone by the Mertz iceberg could lead to less cold water from getting into the global circulation. The global ocean currents would slow down. This was after some glaciologists and climate scientists consider two important consequences: First, it can give a warmer winter in the North Atlantic, which in turn have consequences for the northern continents. Second, the oxygen content could decrease over the deeper currents of the oceans or lost, leading to the death of life in these regions. Other climate scientists, however, keep the collision for a natural process, which have no significant climatic impact on the northern hemisphere.