Icebergs Reaching As Far North As Buenos Aires While Flooding Worsens

[hatrack]

March 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Argentina coast guard was astonished to find icebergs floating along the Atlantic coast. ``It's the first time icebergs of such size reached Buenos Aires,'' Miguel Angel Reyes, 44, chief of maritime traffic at the coast guard, said in an interview. ``The police escorted the icebergs until they were out of the danger zone.''

For scientists, the icebergs' migration underscored how global warming is disrupting weather patterns and threatening agriculture. The coast guard rerouted ships after the pair of icebergs measuring 250 meters (820 feet) long and 30 meters high broke off from the melting Antarctic ice cap in early January and drifted 4,400 kilometers (2,700 miles) north. A month later, two more icebergs headed up the coast. ``The higher temperatures are causing this,'' said Juan Carlos Leiva, 56, a geophysicist at the Argentine Institute of Snow and Glaciers in Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes. ``The situation has gotten worse.'' The implications are worrisome for farming-dependent countries such as Argentina, the world's third-largest exporter of beef, corn and soybeans. Rising temperatures prompt flooding in some areas and dry up rivers in others, said Vicente Barros, a climatology professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

Warmer weather is evaporating water from rivers in northern Argentina at a faster pace than in previous years, curbing hydroelectric power and cutting the water supply to crops, Barros said. It also is bringing more rain to the central provinces of Cordoba, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, flooding fields of soybeans, wheat and corn, he said.

Wire fences jut out of some lakes in the area, showing that the land had been arable before it was engulfed in recent years. Flooding has left some of Argentina's main roadways under water, including Route 7, a 1,000-kilometer highway that runs from the country's western border with Chile to the Atlantic Ocean in the east. ``The flooding has forced us to redesign routes,'' said Carlos Avellaneda, 49, a manager in Empresa de Transporte Don Pedro SRL in Buenos Aires, which has more than 500 cargo trucks. ``We thought it would be for a short period of time, but it has been almost six years.''

EDIT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aEnJGKhyXBkI&refer=latin_america

[file83]

1. Nothing to see here. Move along...

Holy crap. This can't be a good sign.

[central scrutinizer]

2. Global warming is a matter of debate

Bushco has some retrained tobacco-industry scientists whose studies show that it is not happening. Since the scientists haven't agreed yet, we can't interrupt the Murkan way of life for any damn penguins.

[bemildred]

6. Yes, yes, very uncertain, and anyway, it might not be us ... nt

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Wow...

...that's further North than I am!

[jpak]

4. Some big bergs have been sailing through the Drake Passage in recent years

B10-A was in the Drake when I was transiting to Palmer Station in 1999.

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/News/1999/News-Iceberg.asp

NSF gave the ship permission to circumnavigate it and investigate its influence on the local physical oceanography.

We came upon to it at dawn in the mist. It was absolutely astonishing. It literally stretched from horizon to horizon and it took us an entire day to circle it. As big as it was, there was swell breaking over the top of it (which sez a lot about sea conditions in the Drake Passage).

It broke up later that fall and some of the bergs made it fairly far north into the South Atlantic.

[hatrack]

5. Damn, jpak - that's one big iceberg. And even more chilling (so to speak)

. . . is your description of seas in the Drake Passage. :scared:

[jpak]

12. Actually it wasn't that bad

There was a long deep swell that day. One part of the berg had a "cove" that funneled the swell into a large breaker that over-topped it.

It was pretty impressive but I'm glad we never got any closer to it than we did.

In 2004, we did a cruise to the Ross Sea and rendezvoused with iceberg B15A the day it was supposed to collide with the Drygaski Ice Tongue.

It was moving at ~1 knot the previous week but grounded out less than 4 miles from the DIT (it later did take a chunk out of it, but we were long gone by then).

No show, but still pretty impressive - a long bright white line from horizon to horizon.

[phantom power]

7. My desk job now seems even *more* boring.

[Javaman]

8. I seriously doubt your job is more boring than mine. nt

[phantom power]

9. In all fairness, I like my job...

but it does not involve braving the mighty swell to study planetoid-sized icebergs.

It just doesn't.

[Boomer]

10. And this is a problem?

:hide:

[phantom power]

11. Just pondering Achilles' Choice, I suppose.

Maybe my mid-life crisis is arriving a few years early :-)

[Boomer]

13. Would bungee-jumping help?

:bounce:

[phantom power]

14. I'm afraid of heights, and would probably soil myself.

If it comes to that, I'll just dust off my old kayak and go paddle some whitewater.

[Javaman]

15. I could ramble on and on about the early signs of my midlife crisis

I won't go into it, but I will say, that I thought by this time in my life I would be in that plane circling that ice berg.

Funny how life and responcibilities dampen such lofty prospects.