Antarctica gives birth to world’s largest iceberg
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.
FollowA giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Majorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg currently afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.
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. Its surface area spans 4,320 square km (1,668 square miles) and measures 175km (106 miles) long by 25km (15 miles) wide.
By comparison, Spain’s popular tourist island of Majorca in the Mediterranean occupies 3,640 square km. The US state of Rhode Island is smaller still, with a land mass of just 2,678 square km.
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 km (1,305 square miles) in size and also floating in the Weddell Sea.
Another 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.
A-76 was first detected by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed by the US National Ice Centre based in Maryland using imagery from Copernicus Sentinel-1, consisting of two polar-orbiting satellites.
(With inputs from agency)
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