7/23/2023 0 Comments Antarctica iceberg sizeBecause the ice was already floating in the sea before dislodging from the coast, its breakaway does not raise ocean levels, he told Reuters by email. Scambos said the Ronne and another vast ice shelf, the Ross, have "behaved in a stable, quasi-periodic fashion" over the past century or more. Periodic calving of large chunks of those shelves is part of a natural cycle, and the breaking off of A-76, which is likely to split into two or three pieces soon, is not linked to climate change, said Ted Scambos, a research glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Ronne Ice Shelf near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the largest of several enormous floating sheets of ice that connect to the continent's landmass and extend out into surrounding seas. National Ice Center using imagery from Copernicus Sentinel-1, consisting of two polar-orbiting satellites. (CBC News)Ī-76 was first detected by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed by the Maryland-based U.S. The iceberg is about three-quarters the size of Prince Edward Island. The enormity of A-76, which broke away from Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, ranks as the largest existing iceberg on the planet, surpassing the now second-place A-23A, about 3,380 square kilometres (1,305 square miles) in size and also floating in the Weddell Sea.Īnother massive Antarctic iceberg that had threatened a penguin-populated island off the southern tip of South America has since lost much of its mass and broken into pieces, scientists said earlier this year. state of Rhode Island is smaller still, with a land mass of just 2,678 square kilometres (1,034 square miles). That makes it three-quarters the size of P.E.I., which has an area of 5,660 square kilometres, and larger than Spain's tourist island of Majorca in the Mediterranean, which occupies 3,640 square kilometres (1,405 square miles). Its surface area spans 4,320 square kilometres (1,668 square miles) and measures 175 kilometres (106 miles) long by 25 kilometres (15 miles) wide. The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted in recent satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the space agency said in a statement posted on its website with a photo of the enormous, oblong ice sheet. (Copernicus Sentinel data (2021)/ESA, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)Ī giant slab of ice has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday. This animation uses images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission and shows the giant slab of ice breaking off from the Ronne Ice Shelf, lying in the Weddell Sea, on. ESA said icebergs are traditionally named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.The world’s largest iceberg, dubbed A-76, has calved from Antarctica. The name might sound a bit boring for the world’s largest iceberg, but it is based on science. The huge chunk of ice is now officially known as the A-76. New giant #iceberg breaking away from the Ronne Ice Shelf 13-05-2021 roughly 160 km x 25 km satellite image from #Sentinel1 /LmacupcuUW- Keith Makinson May 13, 2021ĮSA said the iceberg was first spotted by Keith Makinson, a polar oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey last week and confirmed from the US National Ice Center using ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery. If Antarctica’s entire ice sheet were to melt, it could raise sea levels by nearly 190 feet. That makes icebergs like this different from glaciers or ice sheets, which are found on land, and which do raise global sea levels when they break off into the ocean and melt. Once it melts, the new iceberg will not lead to a sea level rise, because it was part of a floating ice shelf – just like a melting ice cube doesn’t increase the level of the drink in your glass. Scientists aren’t attributing this particular break-off to climate change, and instead believe it’s part of the natural cycle of iceberg calving in the region. Iceberg calving is part of the natural cycle, with huge chunks of ice breaking off the ice shelf at regular intervals. That makes it slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, ESA said. The iceberg is shaped like a giant ironing board, measuring around 170 kilometers (105 miles) in length and 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in width. The iceberg broke off the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday. The world’s largest iceberg has calved from Antarctica over the past few days, a giant floating piece of ice close to 80 times the size of Manhattan.
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