WHY THE MILITARY HAS AN OFFICE DEDICATED TO TRACKING THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BLOCKS OF ICE
Hope Seck | August 3, 2022
Navy civilian and master icy analyst Katherine Quinn was doing a weekly check-in on the icebergs she monitors when she saw it: a tooth-shaped hunk that had split off from iceberg A-74 in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. The iceberg had “calved” or split into two drifting pieces, each as large as a major world city.
A-74A, as it was now called, the biggest piece, measured 28 nautical miles by 18 nautical miles, or about 32 by 21 land miles. A-74B, the calf, measured nine nautical miles by four nautical miles, or about 10 by five land miles – as long as Washington, DC, and about half as wide.
But why does the U.S. military care enough about how ice splinters at the bottom of the globe to have an office dedicated to tracking it?
The National Ice Center
National Ice Center image of icebergs A-74A and A-74B
Figure 1: Sentinel-1A image of icebergs A-74A and A-74B from June 07, 2022. SUITLAND, MD— U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC), a U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography command, confirmed iceberg A-74 (Fig. 1) split, or calved, into two icebergs—now identified as A-74A and A-74B—near Berkner Island in the Weddell Sea, June 7, 2022. A-74A was centered at 76° 55′ South and 45° 54′ West , measuring 28 nautical miles on its longest axis and 18 nautical miles on its widest axis. A-74B was centered at 76° 45′ South and 44° 54′ West and measured 9 nautical miles on its longest axis and 4 nautical miles on its widest axis.
It turns out that the U.S. National Ice Center, run by U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, based in Suitland, Maryland, and staffed jointly by active-duty officers and civilians from the Navy, Coast Guard, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is the only entity that monitors ice movement and formation across the globe. And it has been doing so since shortly after World War II when the Navy began monitoring ice for its own ships.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/why-the-military-has-an-office-dedicated-to-tracking-the-worlds-biggest-blocks-of-ice/
