Last night when I checked the temperature, it was just below 6 degrees Celsius (Cape Town). The minimum reported temperature for tonight is 3.6 C at 05h07… I’ve been wondering why it is so damn cold this week, until I read this on IOL.co.za: There are 20m high Icebergs floating off our coast!
The sighting has just been reported about 4 hours ago. The article doesn’t say much, except that this has never been observed here before. “This is very unusual and in fact we don’t know of anything in recent history that has being reported this close to South African waters,” said NSRI spokesperson Craig Lambinon.
For those not familiar with African geography, here is a picture of the ocean currents around Africa’s southern tip, along with an indication of where the iceberg was spotted:
As you can see, it is located right in the middle of the Agulhas ocean current, which is fed by the warm Mozambique Current. The aghulas current is know for its considerably higher temperature than the Western cold Benguela current, which is also shown on the map. The agulhas current’s average temperature ranges from 14C to as high as 26C.
Here is another picture showing the main ocean currents of the world:
Do you see any way an iceberg could have drifted here from the north pole?? My theory is that it came in from the South along current “l“, went up and past Australia’s west coast with “m“, went over and past Madagascar with currents “n” and “o” (and not melting completely along the way), and is currently at “p“.
How the hell did an iceberg get to our Eastern Coast? How gigantic did it have to be to begin with for it not to melt in the warm ocean currents along the way? Crazy.
5 comments ↓
I personally, almost agree with the analysis reflected on the possibility of this iceberg. If according to him originated in the Antartic circle, there is no way that it could reach South African shores without being melted. Infact according to my Geographic understanding of climatology, warm Mozambique current would have melted that iceberg. I think there was a foreign substance spoted and perhaps fear made them conclude that it is an iceberg, hence even NSRI fails to give a clear guidance on this possibilty.
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=19987
“”"Thursday 19 May, 2005
An iceberg more than twice the size of Malta has arrived in the backyard of Australia’s Casey station in Antarctica,
The 50km-long iceberg, 788 square kms in area, is known as B15G. It is part of a massive iceberg, B15, that broke away the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in March 2000.”"”
Assuming even bigger icebergs could get trapped in the current going up and past Australia, how large would it have to be for it to survive the warm Mozambique current? 788 square km’s is pretty damn big…
could this be a sign of global warming?
No offence to anyone, but why has no one considered the fact that Earth has been coming out of an Ice Age for Millennia? we have no idea how many times this has happened in our Plante’s History, so who’s to say that this is not normal? I do agree thatit might be happening a bit faster than might be normal, but at the same time, the Planet’s been warming up for a LONG time now, so maybe we’re the ones who need to chill.
why is it so cold i am so cold that my hands and feet are going to fall off
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