The world’s largest iceberg has lifted off from the Antarctic pack ice

An iceberg the size of the Spanish island of Mallorca broke off the coast of Antarctica. Measurements taken by satellites and planes confirm that it is now the largest in the world.

Iceberg A-76 broke off on the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in northwest Antarctica and is now floating in the Weddell Sea, according to the European Space Agency. It is approximately 170 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide. It is larger than Long Island in New York and half the size of Puerto Rico.

The Antarctic Ice Cap it is heating up faster than the rest of the planet, causing snow and ice cover to melt, as well as retreat of glaciers, especially around the Weddell Sea. As glaciers retreat, chunks of ice break off and drift until they break or crash onto the shore.

Last year, currents carried the iceberg A-68A, the largest in the world at the time, from Antarctica to the coast of the South Georgia Islands.. Scientists feared the iceberg would collide with an island that is fertile ground for sea lions and penguins, but it ended up splitting and disintegrating into pieces. The A-68 broke away from the Larsen Ice Front on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 and grew to 6,000 square kilometers.

According to a study published in Nature earlier this month.

The study conducted by 84 scientists from 15 countries concluded that the more ambitious national targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change recently set are not enough to prevent sea level rise. In fact, melting glaciers and ice caps will raise sea levels twice as fast as if countries kept their previous promises under the Paris Agreement.

The A-76 iceberg has a total area of ​​4,320 square kilometers and its detachment was detected by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed by the US National Ice Center using images of Copernicus Sentinel-1. The Sentinel-1 mission found back satélites in órbita polar that se basan in radar images of apertura sintética de banda C, that devuelven datos independently of si es de día o de noche, lo que permite ver regiones remotas como la Antártida durante todo the year.

Icebergs are named after the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, followed by a sequential letter. If the ice mass breaks later, as sometimes happens, each piece adds a sequential letter to its name.

The enormity of the A-76 makes it the largest in the world, wresting the top spot from the A-32A iceberg (approximately 3,880 square kilometers) which also lies in the Weddell Sea. By comparison, the A-74 iceberg that broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in February of this year was only 1,270 square kilometers.

With information from Bloomberg, EFE and EuropaPress

KEEP READING: