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Bermuda-sized ‘ice island’ could threaten ships, oil rigs off coast of Newfoundland
A Bermuda-sized slab of ice from northern Greenland is breaking apart off Labrador, littering the area with icebergs that could pose a threat to offshore oil rigs and ship traffic.
The largest remaining piece of the ice island still floating, called PII-A, was over 58 square kilometres at the last measurement. It is considered an ice island rather than an iceberg because it is wider than it is deep. On Thursday it was 380 kilometres north of St. Anthony, on the tip of Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula.
Brad deYoung, a professor of oceanography at Memorial University, said if the ice island doesn’t end up grounded in the northern coast of Newfoundland it could pick up speed and reach the Grand Banks before it melts. It would be a danger to the offshore oil rigs, and the smaller chunks that are fracturing off, still a couple of square kilometres in size, could damage ships.
“The island would have to thin out a bit because [the oil rigs] are in shallow water, but even thinned out the island would be far heavier than anything those platforms and systems are designed to withstand,” said Mr. deYoung, who estimates the island is more than 100 metres thick. “If it came down at any speed it would cause enormous destruction. The island, depending on how big it is at that time, could weigh several billion tons.”
Mr. deYoung said there’s no real way to stop the ice island and the best bet is to get out of the way.
“If you break up a billion-ton object into two half-billion-ton objects, you still have two half-billion-ton-objects,” Mr. deYoung said. “You haven’t made your problem any better.”
The ice island broke off the Petermann glacier last Aug. 5, and was 280 square kilometres when it first started drifting towards Canada. It fractured in half in September and the other large piece has been grounded since mid-March. PII-A has been traveling south at about 35 kilometres per day.
Charles Randell, president and chief executive officer of C-Core, a St. John’s-based research and development organization, estimates the ice island weighs between 3.5 billion and four billion tonnes. When a slightly smaller iceberg recently separated from Antarctica it was estimated it could provide two litres of water per day for everyone on Earth for two years.
“We have that resource up there, and if we could ever do anything with it, that would be amazing,” he said. “Very, very pure. 110,000-year-old water. Not many contaminants in that.”
Paul Alcock, owner of Northland Discovery, a whale and iceberg sightseeing company that operates out of St. Anthony, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, said he hopes to see the first chunks to start showing up within the next week.
“It’s some of the largest pieces ever known to travel along the Labrador and Newfoundland coast, so that’s going to cause a great deal of interest and a lot of people are going to want to get up close to see it,” Mr. Alcock said.
Gordon Slade, managing director of the Battle Harbour Historic Trust in Mary’s Harbour, said he spoke with a man who took his boat out to one small ice island last week, who described some remarkable sights upon his return.
“There’s harbours and bays, waterfalls and all sorts of stuff on it,” Mr. Slade said.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06...-newfoundland/
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Originally Posted by BeerBaron
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