{"id":10452,"date":"2018-09-05T13:14:59","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T12:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=10452"},"modified":"2018-09-05T13:14:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T12:14:59","slug":"one-trillion-tonne-iceberg-spins-out-to-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/science-environment\/one-trillion-tonne-iceberg-spins-out-to-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"One trillion tonne iceberg spins out to sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>One of the world\u2019s largest icebergs \u2013 four times the size of London \u2013 has broken away from Antarctic shores and started spinning towards the open ocean. Scientists are trying to predict where it\u2019s heading, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/icey_mark\">Professor in Polar Oceanography at The Open University (OU), Mark Brandon<\/a>, is one of those tracking its progress.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>&#8220;Spectacular momentum&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>Professor Brandon has been examining satellite images of the sixth largest iceberg. Known as A68, the iceberg broke away from the <em>Antarctic Larsen C Ice Shelf<\/em> in July 2017, but settled on the shallow seabed.\u00a0Satellite images from August 2018 show that weather conditions and currents had enabled it to break free of the ice shelf and start rotating.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Brandon, says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBetween 7 and 12 July 2018, the weather conditions and ocean currents conspired to swing the trillion tonnes of the giant iceberg A68 in an anticlockwise direction. It has a spectacular amount of momentum and it&#8217;s not going to be stopped easily. I should think we will see some interesting collisions with the ice shelf in the next few months.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read more about the trillion tonne iceberg and what caused it to start spinning <u><a href=\"http:\/\/mallemaroking.org\/a-trillion-tonnes-of-ice-a68a\/\">in Mark Brandon\u2019s blog<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the world\u2019s largest icebergs \u2013 four times the size of London \u2013 has broken away from Antarctic shores and started spinning towards the open ocean. Scientists are trying to predict where it\u2019s heading, and Professor in Polar Oceanography at The Open University (OU), Mark Brandon, is one of those tracking its progress. &#8220;Spectacular [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[136,861,1121,1813],"class_list":["post-10452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-environment","tag-antarctica","tag-faculty-of-stem","tag-iceberg","tag-professor-mark-brandon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}