The largest icebergs in history

Water, in its frozen state always attracts our attention. Whether little icicle in the courtyard, snowflake falling from heaven or huge iceberg, furrowing ocean expanses.

Icebergs, like unique and amazing objects of nature, are the subject of study of many sciences. They hide their most of them under water.

The first who saw the ice of Antarctica was the English navigator James Cook. But, making a mistake in the logbook, he did not become the discoverer of this mainland. Later, by spending their ships between the icebergs, Russian researchers Lazarev and Bellinshausen, became the discovers of the Antarctic.

And today we will look at the largest icebergs in history.

Iceberg Joseph Fletcher (Iceberg T-3)

This big iceberg bears the name of his researcher - Joseph Fletcher. Due to the duration of its existence, this block of ice was so named - "Flewing Ice Island Fletcher".

They found and investigated him at the end of the 40s of the last century. Having measured Aisberg, scientists found that its area is about 90 km², and ice thickness is up to 50 meters.

In the 50-70s, research stations worked on Iceberg, which made it possible to enrich human knowledge about these floating ice.
In the early 80s, hitting one of the ocean currents, T-3 was brought to the North Atlantic and melted.

The largest in the northern hemisphere

This is a rather rare phenomenon when large icebergs roll off from the shores of Greenland. It happened in 2010, when the Greenland is out of glaciers, a huge block of ice broke off. Its area was 260 km².

Under the influence of Golf Stream Iceberg melted. Moving in the southern direction, this iceberg could be a threat to ships in North Atlantic.

Iceberg "Titanic"

Let not be the biggest, but perhaps the most famous iceberg in the history of mankind.

Iceberg was in a height of 105 meters and weighing about 420 thousand tons. Before the collision with the "Titanic" Aisberg, left from glaciers in the Greenland Gully, the Isle of Greenland, two years drifted in North Atlantic.

On April 14, 1912, Iceberg faced the largest ship of the time "Titanic". For several hours, the ship sank, having with him 1495 of human lives.

Iceberg was later inspected and traces of the ship's paint discovered on his ice surface. In 1913, the scenes of the island of Franz Joseph, Iceberg melted.

The highest iceberg

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Falkland Islands in the southern part of the Atlantic found and explored the highest iceberg in history. Its height was 450 meters. He struck researchers with her greatness and sizes. For comparison, the top of this iceberg was located at the height of the spire of the highest building of New York.

From the imperfection of the then scientific equipment, the iceberg was not thoroughly studied. Where and how he finished his drift in the ocean is not known. He did not even have time to assign code and name their own. So he entered the story as the highest iceberg discovered in 1904.

In 1956, Big Iceberg was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, left from Antarctica coast.

The sizes of this iceberg that received the name "Santa Maria", were 97 × 335 km. Was investigated by the American ship "U.S. Glacier. But, unfortunately, measuring its size and approximate weight, Iceberg has not been studied in detail. By making a circle around Antarctica, this split and melted.

This ice block size with the island of Jamaica will fall from Antarctica in 2000. Its Square was 11 thousand km². Furthering quite a bit in open water, Iceberg was covered in the Ross Sea.

Ice gigid weighing more than 3 trillion tons, had a negative impact on the ecology of this part of the Atlantic. First of all, the courts could not be made to research stations to supply expeditions. Secondly, the Penguin population of Adeli decreased. Adults are not able to get to their chicks from behind the iceberg.

In 2003, under the influence of external forces, split into two huge pieces. They, in turn, began to split back on smaller pieces. In 2005, the minor fragments of the iceberg were noticed not far from the shores of New Zealand.

Iceberg C19a

Near Antarctica, in the western part of the Ross Sea there is a place where a lot of icebergs bring. Stuck here and the largest iceberg today, which received C19a code.

The area of \u200b\u200bthis ice is giant is 5,500 km². Due to the fact that it will be clamped by other, smaller blocks of ice, it is difficult for him to come up to explore more thoroughly. But it was possible to establish measuring and navigation equipment. So, as soon as Iceberg starts its movement, it will be possible to trace the direction of its movements in the waters of the ocean.

This part of the World Ocean is truly unique. Here huge icebergs can be in a fixed state for a long time and not to melt. Over the past five years, 17 major icebergs have been distinguished from Antarctica, which indicates the process of climate warming.

Larsen S.

Stock Foto Larsen Glacier with Antarctica before the moment she splits in the place of this crack

An amazing news on July 12, 2017 was the formation of a new Big Iceberg in the entire history of observations. Scientists have long known that this day was supposed to happen.

It turned out that the biggest shelf Glacier Antarctica called "Larsen C" was slowly split, this process began at least in 1990. In 1995, one fragment was broken from a major glacier, his name Larsen A. Larsen in the glacier in 2002. The next (and the biggest) piece of leaving after 15 years.

This iceberg gradually splits into smaller and melts, but after the appearance of its weight is more than a trillion tons, and its surface area is 5800 km². For comparison, the area of \u200b\u200bthe entire Moscow is equal to 2511 km².

Finally

As you can see, Icebergs are really the most unique phenomena of nature. For example, scientists calculated that when melting B-15, its volume could feed the water Nile for 80 years.

Icebergs are dangerous not only to man, but also animals. Blooding the ways of migration of animals and birds lead to their death and a decrease in population. But at the same time, 90% of fresh water on Earth is concentrated in the ice.

Scientists Oceanologists and environmentalists agree that the latter increase in the number of overwhelmed ice blocks, testifies to the warming of climate. But this process is temporary, monstering the icebergs lead to a decrease in the temperature of the warm currents, which will eventually lead to cold and the onset of the new glacier in the north of the planet.