Latest news with #calving
National Post
11-07-2025
- Science
- National Post
Greenland coastal village bracing for potential collision with giant iceberg
An enormous iceberg is drifting dangerously close to the shore in northwestern Greenland. The skyscraper-sized piece of ice is on a potential collision course with the harbour of Innaarsuit, a village in Greenland's Avannaata Municipality. Article content It originally sidled up to the village last week, but seemed to have drifted away before reappearing on Monday and remaining precariously close. Article content Local authorities have issued warnings to residents as the iceberg sits near the Royal Greenland fish factory and the local grocery store. People have been advised to take care when in that part of the community. Article content Emergency services are encouraging families not to go in a group towards the store. They are also asking people who have difficulty walking to be extra careful. The fish-processing factory has been temporarily closed. Article content What can be done with large icebergs that threaten coastal communities? Article content Article content There are few options for dealing with threatening icebergs. One of the main concerns with a large iceberg is that it will 'calve' (split), with pieces falling into the ocean, resulting in large waves that will swamp nearby coastal communities. Article content The first line of defence is for nearby residents to evacuate. That occurred in 2018, when this same Greenlandic community was similarly threatened. Article content Other options have been considered but remain experimental. They involve explosives to break up the iceberg and towing. These tactics present monumental challenges. Article content The U.S. Coast Guard says aside from difficulty involved in successfully getting onto an iceberg, demolition would require 'a 1,000 lb. charge of conventional explosives…to break up approximately 70,000 cubic ft of ice (an iceberg weighing 1,960 tons).' Further, a hundred of these charges would be needed to destroy an average iceberg, (presumably more for the mammoth berg threatening Innaarsuit at this time). Article content Article content Melting a medium-sized iceberg of 100,000 tons would theoretically require heat from the 'combustion of over a quarter of a million gallons of gasoline' says the Coast Guard. Article content Article content Icebergs drift south after calving from Arctic and western Greenland glaciers. They are regular sights in spring-early summer. Transported by Atlantic Ocean currents to waters off Greenland, Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as Cape Breton Island, they eventually melt in somewhat warmer southern climes. An iceberg that drifts south rarely lasts more than a year. Article content Icebergs flow at speeds of up to seven kilometres a year, first floating in Arctic bays before passing into the Labrador Current and south into what is known as ' Iceberg Alley.' Article content Article content Every year about 40,000 medium to large icebergs calve from glaciers but only 400-800 make it as far south as St. John's. However, those numbers can vary greatly from year to year based on temperature, ocean current, wind direction and sea/pack ice. Article content
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Climate
- The Guardian
Country diary: A test of patience here on the farm
At this time of year, the farmer must learn patience, as we wait for our belted galloway cows to calve. I'm impatient to see the colours and markings of the calves, and to know how many will be heifers and how many will be bulls. But I must wait. Three or four times a day, I make the short journey along to the Heart Wood pasture, underneath the distinctive heart-shaped wood visible from the M6 motorway, and stare at cows' tails and bottoms to see if there is any sign of calving. The hot weather has gone. I am wearing a woolly hat again and the fire is back on in the living room as well as the kitchen. Days are generally wet but not too wild; the grass is growing and the river is full. While I'm waiting, I have time to notice everything: what is flowering, the oystercatcher chicks in the grass and the swallows swooping over the river. It is too wet to sit in the grass, so I find a rock to sit on and watch the cows. People rush by on the motorway in their cars, and on the west coast mainline in their trains, unaware of the watching and waiting going on in the valley. We farm on both sides of the transport corridor here. The land on one side is in the Yorkshire Dales national park, the other in the Lake District national park. The strip in the middle with the motorway and railway is in neither. In about two years' time, eight bridges in our valley will be replaced. The bridge we go under multiple times a day to access bits of land will be lifted off and replaced. The motorway junction, and possibly our only shop and petrol station within six miles, will be closed for the duration of the works. The bridge that we go over into Tebay itself will be closed. Local people won't be able to get here to buy meat. My son's girlfriend will have an 18-mile diversion each way to milk her goats. Everyone in the valley will be inconvenienced. At the moment this feels as if it will make everyday life impossible for those who live and work here. Our MP, Tim Farron, has asked an urgent question about this in parliament. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
CBC
25-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Baby bison roaming Brokenhead Ojibway Nation for 1st time in decades
Its been more than two decades since Brokenhead Ojibway Nation had a buffalo herd, but that changed in December. This calving season the community is welcoming some new hoofed neighbours.
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Researchers puzzled as baby whales spotted in unexpected places along Australia's ‘humpback highway'
Baby humpback whales are turning up in unexpected places. In Australia, humpback mums were assumed to travel north to give birth in warmer, tropical waters – like the Great Barrier Reef – before migrating south with their calves along the 'humpback highway' to feed in waters off Antarctica. But new research, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, has flipped that script, recording newborns as far south as Tasmania, more than 1,500km from the assumed calving zone. The study, which sought to understand if humpback whales gave birth beyond the previously accepted southern limit, uncovered more than 200 confirmed sightings of newborns across an area stretching from Queensland down to Tasmania and across to New Zealand's South Island. Humpback babies – about the size of a small car – came out tail first and floppy, said the study's co-author and whale scientist Dr Vanessa Pirotta. They were identified by their folded-over dorsal fins, and were generally light grey or white. Pirotta said more research was needed to establish why newborn calves were being observed so far south. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter 'It may be the case that this has always been happening and we've just not documented it well or been paying attention,' she said. 'Or it may be something new is happening because waters are becoming warmer further south of those traditional tropical areas, which means that they're more favourable for a humpback whale to have a calf.' The study was prompted when whale-watching skipper Jane McPhee-Frew, who is also a co-author of the paper, spied a baby off the coast of Newcastle, 160km north of Sydney. 'It seemed out of place,' said McPhee-Frew, a researcher at the University of New South Wales. 'The calf was tiny, obviously brand new. What were they doing here?' Data from whale-watching operators, citizen scientists and government wildlife agencies revealed many more unusual observations, most dating after 2016. Once they started investigating, reported sightings came in from further and further south, McPhee-Frew said, indicating humpback migration and breeding was much more complex than thought. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion 'Eventually, we just ran out of land to see them from,' she said. 'So we don't actually know where the limit is. But we had reports right to the bottom of Tassie, the southernmost points of Western Australia and to the South Island of New Zealand.' Climate change has caused average sea surface temperatures in Australia to rise by 1.08C since 1900, according to the CSIRO, with the greatest warming occurring off south-east Australia and Tasmania. Greater awareness and observation of newborn calves outside their expected zone was crucial to better protect those mothers and calves, Pirotta said. There were a lot of navigational challenges along the humpback highway, she said. 'You've got human impacts – ship strike risks, entanglement risks, predation from natural predators, tourists [and] boats. 'Research like this will help us with that better understanding of keeping a lookout, but also communicating to the public that they are in these areas.' Angus Henderson, a whale researcher based at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies who was not involved in the study, said the unexpected sightings might also relate to the recovery of humpback whales since the end of industrial whaling in Australia. But as human activities expanded alongside recovering whale populations, conflicts were becoming more common, he said. 'Vessel traffic, particularly large ships, can kill whales,' he said. 'Speed restrictions, and rerouting vessels away from whale habitat is the most effective way to minimise interactions and deaths. 'Entanglement in shark nets, ghost nets [and] discarded fishing gear … is another key threat to humpbacks along east coast breeding grounds, and with expansion in distribution this interaction is also expanded.'
Japan Times
16-05-2025
- Climate
- Japan Times
Huge ice falls at Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier stir awe and concern
The deep cracking sound bursting from within the ice signals the dramatic fall about to happen. Seconds later, a block of ice some 70 meters tall — the size of a 20-story building — collapses from the face of the Perito Moreno glacier into the aquamarine water below. The sight has attracted visitors to Argentina's most famous glacier for years. Standing on platforms facing the ice, they wait for the next crack to split the cool Patagonian air. But recently the size of the ice chunks breaking off — a process called "calving" — has been starting to alarm local guides and glaciologists, already anxious at a prolonged retreat by Perito Moreno, which had bucked the trend in recent decades by maintaining its mass even as warmer climates spurred faster glacial melting worldwide. "Ice calving events of this size haven't been very common at the Perito Moreno glacier over the past 20 years," said Pablo Quinteros, an official tourist guide at Los Glaciares National Park in the southern province of Santa Cruz. "It's only in the last four to six years that we've started to see icebergs this big," he said during a visit in April. The face of the glacier, which flows down from Andean peaks to end in the waters of Lake Argentina, had for decades held more or less steady, some years advancing and others retreating. But in the last five years, there's been a firmer retreat. "It had been in more or less the same position for the past 80 years. And that's unusual," said Argentine glaciologist Lucas Ruiz with state science body CONICET, whose research focus is the future of Patagonian glaciers in the face of climate change. "However, since 2020, signs of retreat have begun to be seen in some parts of the Perito Moreno glacier's face." He said that the glacier could rebound as it has done before, but that for the moment it was losing between one and two meters of water equivalent per year, which if not reversed could lead to a situation where the loss accelerates. A state-backed 2024 report, co-authored by Ruiz and presented to Argentina's Congress, showed that while Perito Moreno's mass has been overall stable for half a century, the period since 2015 has seen the fastest and most prolonged loss of mass in 47 years, on average losing 0.85 meters per year. Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UNESCO report in March. Ruiz said instruments his research team used to monitor the glacier had shown an increase in air temperature in the area of around 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade and precipitation decreasing, meaning less accumulation of snow and ice. "The thing with Perito Moreno is that it took a while, so to speak, to feel the effects of climate change," Ruiz said. Now, however, the accumulation of ice at the top of the glacier was being outpaced by melting and calving at the bottom. "The changes we are seeing today clearly show that this balance of forces ... has been disrupted, and today the glacier is losing both in thickness and area." For now, the glacier remains an awe-inspiring attraction for travelers, who board boats to see the calving and the huge icebergs floating around the lake up close. "It's insane. The most incredible thing I've ever seen," said Brazilian tourist Giovanna Machado on the deck of one of the boats, which have to be careful of sudden ice falls. "Even in photos, you just can't grasp the immensity of it, and it's perfect. It's amazing. I think everyone should come here at least once in their lifetime."
