NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Around Antarctica, there are a couple of very big ice shelves - Ross is the biggest, followed. Melting peaked near South Georgia, where the scientists. A picture of the A-74 iceberg, which was calved from Antarcticas Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2021.

Notably, the Delaware-sized Iceberg A-68A that broke from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017 finally splintered apart in the waters around South Georgia in February 2021. The researchers showed that from July 2017 until January 2021, melting from the bottom of the iceberg accounted for 32 of its loss. The worlds biggest iceberg - more than twice the size of Greater London - is on the move. Other major icebergs have met their demise in a similar fashion. Around the time of this image, A-76A measured 78 kilometers long and 11 kilometers wide-an area about the size of Austin, Texas. It is about 70 times the land area of Manhattan, making it the worlds biggest iceberg right now. Iceberg A-76A appears to be experiencing this same fate as it nears South Georgia late in the austral autumn. A large iceberg broke off from the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the European Space Agency said. From there, they typically whip north toward the South Atlantic and quickly melt in the region’s warmer-but still chilly-waters. It still measured 135 kilometers long and 26 kilometers wide-a total area about twice the size of London.īut the Drake Passage often marks a turning point for icebergs. More than a year into its voyage, the berg’s size had not changed much. “That obviously speaks to the force of powerful currents in this part of the Southern Ocean.”īy October 2022, Iceberg A-76A had likely escaped the clockwise circulation of the Weddell Gyre and entered the Drake Passage-a turbulent body of water between South America’s Cape Horn and Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands. “It is impressive to think it ‘sailed’ that far in about two years,” said Christopher Shuman, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County, glaciologist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. They were about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) north of the berg’s origin near the Ronne Ice Shelf. The new berg, estimated to be around 1550 sq km and around 150 m thick, calved when the crack known as Chasm-1 fully extended northwards severing the west part of the ice shelf. But its size has dwindled during the past month as pieces have splintered off in warmer, more northern waters.Īt the time of this image, Iceberg A-76A and several newly separated pieces floated near the remote island of South Georgia. Satellite imagery confirms an enormous iceberg, around five times the size of Malta, has finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf.

It shows Iceberg A-76A, which broke from A-76 shortly after the initial calving and remains the event’s largest surviving berg. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image on May 24, 2023. Two years later, only fragments of the former berg remain. At the time, it was the largest iceberg floating anywhere in the world. In May 2021, Iceberg A-76 broke from the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

Antarctica iceberg 2021