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Iceberg alley canada map11/20/2023 ![]() For the moment there is still time to enjoy these 10,000-year-old remnants of the past.Iceberg Alley stretches from the coast of Labrador to the southeast coast of the island of Newfoundland. Will the Iceberg Alley lose its name? It would be unfortunate, but it is possible. While the Newfoundland iceberg sightseeing tourism industry may well have benefited from a succession of exceptional iceberg seasons linked to a recent rebound in cold ocean conditions in the mid-2010s, its future is less certain. These outliers may well become the new norm as climate projections suggest with a high level of confidence that the frequency and severity of extreme events, such as an anomalously warm year, will increase in the future. However, it appears that a warmer climate definitely leads to fewer or simply no icebergs at all in Newfoundland.įor example, when looking at the region’s three warmest years on record - 1966, 20 - only zero, one and one icebergs were reported. The environmental parameters that control the number of icebergs in Newfoundland in a given year remain unclear. And the numbers may lie, as improvements in iceberg-detecting technology may be responsible for an apparent upward trend in counts.Ī glacier calves icebergs into a fjord off the Greenland ice sheet in southeastern Greenland in August 2017. While this may suggest that more icebergs will calve into the ocean, it is far from guaranteed that this will lead to more sightseeing opportunities in Newfoundland. With the planet warming up as a result of anthropogenic climate change, the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass. Titanic twist: 1912 wasn’t a bad year for icebergs after all Only two years, 19, in the 122-year time series have reported no icebergs journeying south of 48 degrees north. This occurred in 20, where only one iceberg was observed in 2011, which saw two icebergs and in 2013, where 13 icebergs were recorded. More recently, 1,515 icebergs were spotted in 2019, a year characterized with colder than normal spring temperatures and immediately following another cold period in the mid-2010s.īut these numbers decrease drastically during years characterized by milder winters and an early spring. The 1980s and ‘90s were an especially cold period in the region, and more than 1,500 icebergs were observed during some of those years, with a record high of 2,202 in 1984. These annual counts are extremely variable and affected by the climate of the North Atlantic. In an average year, nearly 800 icebergs are expected to cross the boundary, which lies just north of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. ![]() The International Ice Patrol’s annual count of the number of icebergs that slip south of 48 degrees north provides the longest and most reliable time series of icebergs in Newfoundland. Coast Guard on behalf of several maritime nations, was created to monitor iceberg dangers for ships in the North Atlantic. Following this tragedy, in 1913, the International Ice Patrol, operated by the U.S. ![]() That year was not an abnormal one for icebergs, with 1,038 icebergs reported. The most famous of these icebergs is probably the one that sank the Titanic just south of the tip of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in 1912. While these icebergs can live for as long as a decade, those reaching Newfoundland are generally one to two years old. The same pressure pushes the glaciers - rivers of ice funnelled by numerous fjords - towards the ocean where they calve and form icebergs.Ī subset of these icebergs, mostly originating from the west coast of Greenland, will reach Newfoundland. The pressure that comes from the enormous weight transforms the snow into ice. The Greenland ice sheet is the result of thousands of years of snow accumulation that has reached a thickness of more than one kilometre. Data: General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans. The icebergs that arrive in Newfoundland calve from the west coast of Greenland and follow ocean currents to the south. ![]()
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