The iceberg broke off the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, the European Room Agency (ESA) claimed Wednesday.
The iceberg is formed like a large ironing board, measuring around 170 kilometers (105 miles) in duration and 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in width. That will make it marginally larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, ESA mentioned.
Once it melts, the new iceberg will not direct to a sea level increase, because it was portion of a floating ice shelf — just like a melting ice cube doesn’t maximize the amount of the consume in your glass.
ESA reported the iceberg was initially noticed by Keith Makinson, a polar oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey previous week and confirmed from the US National Ice Middle applying ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery.
The substantial chunk of ice is now formally regarded as the A-76. The identify could seem a little bit dull for the world’s biggest iceberg, but it is based mostly on science. ESA stated icebergs are usually named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they ended up originally sighted, then a sequential range, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.