shipping lanes swarmed by icebergs
More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping
lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in
the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of
hundreds of kilometres.
Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise
winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global
warming, which is accelerating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.
As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the US Coast
Guard’s international ice patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds
of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The
average for this time of year is about 80.
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