They detect the detachment of an iceberg of more than a thousand square kilometers in Antarctica – Telam

A 1,270 square kilometer iceberg has broken away from a pack ice south of the Wedell Sea in Antarctica, so its position will be monitored to support and plan the upcoming Antarctic summer campaign, the Secretariat of the Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic.

The detachment of the gigantic iceberg, whose process began in 2019 and ended yesterday, was detected by specialists from the Argentine Antarctic Institute through images from the Argentinian satellite Saocom 1A, detailed the secretariat.

The iceberg broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf, which formed “by a mass of floating ice, which is the continuation in the ocean of glaciers that come from the continent, in this case from Antarctica”explained the secretary.

The agency noted that this barrier, “has yet other significant cracks that have appeared in recent years that will lead to more ice drum detachments in the future, so the monitoring does not end with the detachment from this iceberg “.

“As long as it does not undergo the action of the oceans and is in maritime areas at very low temperatures, the iceberg can remain without melting for many years,” said the secretariat and added that it is important to analyze these large iceberg detachment processes “to improve knowledge of the dynamics of Antarctic ice shelves”.

In the zone “Only a few ships are sailing in this southern and remote region; the Argentine logistic and scientific campaign has already accessed this area during the last days of January and will not do so again until next summer”, a bed.

“Therefore, the task ahead is to monitor the positions of the iceberg (and others that might come off) to plan and support the navigation of the next Antarctic summer campaign.”, precisely the secretary.

He said that in addition to logistics ships, ships that navigate Antarctic waters and request information from Argentine satellites “can also benefit from these images as a tool to facilitate their navigation.”

In recent years, Argentina has put into orbit two satellites developed in the country, SAOCOM 1A and SAOCOM 1B of the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE).

“The development of national science and technology has enabled our country to have access to more images to expand the satellite database and to be able to monitor the dynamics of Antarctic glaciers more regularly,” said the secretary of the area, Daniel Filmus.

The location of ice shelves and the distance between them and Antarctic bases can be considerable; Argentina’s Belgrano II base, for example, is located 400 kilometers southwest of the barrier.

They are much further away from the cities where the research institutes that monitor and study these ice sheets are located. For this reason, its evolution is done mainly by means of satellite images.