The world’s largest iceberg separated in Antarctica

The break was originally observed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a British research organization for the polar areas which has a base nearby. The images of the huge block of ice A-76 were taken by the Sentinel-1 satellite, which belongs to the European Earth observation program Copernicus.

According to the United States National Ice Center, the A-76 iceberg began to separate on May 13 from the Ronne pack.

The British polar station located on Brunt Iceberg, also in the Weddell Sea, witnessed the rupture of a 1,270 square kilometer iceberg last February.

In November 2020, another giant iceberg, which was the largest in the world when it took off in 2017, came dangerously close to a remote island in the South Atlantic, threatening colonies of penguins and seals. This A68 iceberg broke away from a gigantic ice shelf, called Larsen C, depriving it of 12% of its surface and thus making it more unstable.

Other parts of this barrier at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated in 1995 and 2002. The planet has warmed by more than 1 ° C since the pre-industrial era due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, but Antarctica has warmed twice as fast.

The formation of icebergs is a natural process that warming air and oceans are accelerating, scientists say. Icebergs are traditionally named with a letter that corresponds to the region of Antarctica where they were first detected, followed by a number.