Newswise — Who better to comment on the Delaware-sized iceberg that broke off from Antarctica than an oceanography professor from the University of Delaware?
Carlos Moffat, an expert on glacier-ocean interactions, can talk about the importance and causes of the iceberg-release event - and can also detail how this did not come as a surprise to the scientific community.
Moffat emphasizes that while massive and significant, the event won’t contribute to sea level rise because the iceberg is breaking off from a floating ice shelf. This, he says, is ice that is already floating and is "accounted for" in terms of sea level.
What is concerning, he says, is that floating ice shelves play a key role in keeping the ice that is on land — which does contribute to sea level rise — from moving faster to the ocean.
He also says that while many will want to attribute this event to Global Climate Change, a more important question is whether the changing conditions in the atmosphere or the ocean (because the ice shelf is floating, it can be melted from above or from below) are causing continued retreat that will eventually lead to collapse.
To set up an interview with Carlos Moffat, contact Peter Bothum at 302-831-1418 or [email protected].
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