The World’s Largest Iceberg Breaks Free of Antarctica
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A 4000 square-kilometer iceberg has been cleaved from the Ronne Ice Shelf, making it the largest current iceberg.
The Weddell Sea, part of the Southern Ocean, is already home to some pretty impressively sized icebergs, and a new berg that has separated from the Ronne Ice Shelf has just snatched the record for the largest extant iceberg.
The gigantic iceberg, dubbed A-76, is 4,320 square kilometers large and was spotted by the British Antarctic Survey a project that is one of the world’s leading polar science operations¹.
Humongous Iceberg Bigger Than New York City Has Broken Off From Antarctica - Photo
Sputnik International
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According to the European Space Agency, which broke the news, it has become the world’s largest iceberg, behemoths like A-68, which was the size of Brunei. Icebergs are periodically calved from ice shelves, something that is part of a natural cycle. However, in recent years these instances have increased, which researchers blame on climate change.
A gigantic iceberg has broken off the edge of an ice shelf in Antarctica, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported, citing data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 space mission. According to it, the surface area of the enormous chunk of ice measures around 4,320 square kilometres, which is four times the size of New York City.