Giant icebergs move towards Australia

An ice block of hundreds of square kilometers is drifting towards the land of kangaroos.

CNN said, Neal Young - an expert of Australia's Antarctic Authority - discovered icebergs after analyzing satellite images of the US Aerospace Agency. It is about 19 km long and has an area of ​​about 140 square kilometers. The tape block is named B17B.

Australia's Antarctic governing body claimed that B17B separated from Ross ice shelf in the southernmost Earth 10 years ago and floated near Antarctica before heading north. Initially its area was up to 400 square kilometers, but then it split into smaller blocks. As of December 9, ice blocks are about 1,700 kilometers west of Australia.

Satellite images show that many giant ice blocks separated from the Ross ice shelf of Antarctica.B17B is the fourth block of ice from the right.Photo: AP.

As predicted by Young, the size of the ice block will decrease when it reaches the warm waters near the shore. "When washed into warm water, the ice mass will melt slowly, creating hundreds of smaller ice blocks , " he explained.

Many scientists say that the appearance of B17B is a unique event during the past century.

In November, an ice block of 500 m wide and 50 m high was discovered near Australia's Macquarie Island. At that time it was continuing to move toward New Zealand.

Young said that the appearance of ice blocks like B17B will become more popular in the future due to global warming. Currently Antarctica is also suffering from the effects of climate change like everywhere else on earth. Scientists say that in the past 50 years the Antarctic temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius, nearly six times the average increase of the globe.