![]() ![]() ![]() NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. From that point, icebergs often whip north toward the equator and quickly melt in the area’s warmer waters. Sentinel-1 satellites carry synthetic aperture radar instruments, which can observe surfaces even in the darkness of austral winter.Īs they continue to drift north, icebergs are usually pushed east by the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current funneling through the Drake Passage. It is already more than 500 kilometers north of its position in July 2022, when the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite showed the berg passing the Antarctic Peninsula. 'Its become a poster child, obviously, and therell be a lot of attention on it,' he said of the 4,320 square-kilometer (1,668 square-mile) floating island of ice. It remains to be seen where A-76A will drift next. ![]() In October 2022, USNIC reported that the berg maintained the same dimensions. National Ice Center (USNIC) reported that A-76A measured 135 kilometers long and 26 kilometers wide-a total area equal to about twice the size of London. The passage is a turbulent body of water between South America’s Cape Horn and Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands, including Elephant Island visible in this image.ĭespite the long journey, the iceberg’s size remains remarkably unchanged. By 16 April 2021, no significant fragments remained. ![]() A huge ice block has broken off from western Antarctica into the Weddell Sea. Iceberg A-68 was a giant tabular iceberg adrift in the South Atlantic, having calved from Antarcticas Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017. The largest of those pieces-Iceberg A-76A-now drifts nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away in the Drake Passage. The iceberg, dubbed A-76, measures around 4320 sq km in size currently making it the largest berg in the world. Within a month, the iceberg lost that status when it broke into three named pieces. At the time, it was the largest iceberg anywhere on the planet. The iceberg’s parent berg ( A-76) broke from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf in May 2021. (Icebergs are not sea ice they are the floating fragments of glaciers or ice shelves, whereas sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface.) The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years. Satellite imagery confirms an enormous iceberg, around five times the size of Malta, has finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. Notice the iceberg’s long tabular shape is distinct from the sea ice farther south in the Southern Ocean. Giant iceberg breaks away from Antarctic ice shelf. The berg is visible in this natural-color image, acquired on October 31, 2022, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. This is Antarctic iceberg A-76A-the biggest remaining piece of what was once the largest iceberg floating in the world’s oceans. The British Antarctic Survey said Monday that the iceberg is 1,550. Once huge blocks of ice have formed, icebergs occasionally detach as a result of marine currents, temperature changes and other environmental factors.In October 2022, a clearing in the clouds revealed a huge, geometric piece of ice floating in the Drake Passage. On Sunday, a massive piece of Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf a chunk about the size of two New York Cities broke free. Ecologists and others had feared that during its journey the iceberg might become. Icebergs and the two polar caps account for approximately 70% of all fresh water on the planet.Įxperts in the field estimate that icebergs are formed in temperatures of up to -89C (-128F), far below the frozen water in places where sunlight rarely reaches. In its prime, A68a was nearly 800 feet thick, though all but 120 feet of that was hidden below the waterline. Mostly originating from Greenland and Antarctica, icebergs are wandering masses which float around the earth’s two poles. “And at the end of December, Antarctic sea ice extent stood at the lowest in the 45-year satellite record.” What are icebergs? It broke from the western side of Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarcticas Weddell Sea, the European Space Agency. “While the decline in Antarctic sea ice extent is always steep at this time of year, it has been unusually rapid this year,” the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported earlier this month. The iceberg, called A-76, measures about 105 miles in length and is over 15 miles wide. Our science and operational teams continue to monitor the ice shelf in real-time to ensure it is safe, and to maintain the delivery of the science we undertake at Halley,” said BAS glaciologist Professor Dominic Hodgson. “ This calving event has been expected and is part of the natural behavior of the Brunt Ice Shelf. Full screen Huge iceberg breaks off in the Antarctic EUROPEAN UNION, COPERNICUS SENTI EUROPEAN UNION via REUTERS ![]()
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