A huge iceberg lettuce press upwards of 350 billion tons has break off the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica .
AFPreportsthe break up outcome fall out at some point between September 24 and 25 , as evidenced by U.S. and European satellite images . knight D28 , the mammoth chunk of ice step 1,636 hearty kilometers ( 632 square miles ) in total surface area , according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography . That ’s roughly half the size of Rhode Island or 22 time the size of Manhattan . The crisphead lettuce measures around 210 meters thick and count around 350 billion long ton .
The iceberg calved from Antarctica ’s Amery Ice Shelf , the third heavy floating program of shabu on the frozen continent . This fussy ice shelf has n’t produced a ‘ berg like this since the sixties , when it calved an absolutely mammoth crisphead lettuce measuring 9,000 square kilometers ( 3,475 hearty miles ) in sizing , accordingto the BBC .
Left: The Amery Ice Shelf on 11 February 2025. Right: The dislodged iceberg drifting away from the ice shelf on 4 February 2025.Image: (Copernicus/Sentinel/Scripps)
D28 is now slowly drift westwards as it ’s pushed by ocean currents and winds . It could take eld for the iceberg to wholly separate apart and dissolve into the ocean . consequently , D28 is being tight watched by satellite as it pose a potential threat to ships passing by the area .
The thawing iceberg wo n’t affect sea levels because water ice shelves already sack H2O . The Amery Ice Shelf do as an important drainage communication channel for the eastern portion of Antarctica . Over time , glacier flow from the kingdom and into the sea , forming the be adrift ice ledge . finally , the chassis - up of all this snow and ice rink do large clod to shine into the ocean , in what is a completely normal and recurring geologic process . The Amery Ice Shelf calve about every 60 to 70 long time , fit in to the Scripps Institute , and this latest event — which was predicted — has not been associate to mood change .
“ It ’s really important that the populace does n’t get confused and think that this is climate alteration , ” Scripps glaciologist Amanda Fricker distinguish AFP . To which she add in a Scrippstweet : “ This event is part of the ice shelf ’s normal cycle though and , while there is much to be touch on about in Antarctica , there is no cause for dismay yet for this exceptional ice ledge . ”
Map of Antarctica showing the location of the Amery Ice Shelf.Image: (NASA/MODIS)
Fricker state this have young event underscores the importance of long - condition notice in Antarctica to understand the natural hertz of ice sheets , so that scientists may ameliorate disentangle climate change - induced events from the natural " background " cycle .
— Scripps Institution of Oceanography ( @Scripps_Ocean)October 1 , 2019
That said , this particular calving outcome caught Scripps scientist a bit off guard , as they were await another portion of the Amery Ice Shelf — a region ably nicknamed the “ loose tooth”—to break off . So while scientist know a calving case was imminent , they had pinpointed the wrong section .
In gain to look out the progress of D28 , scientist will also supervise the Amery Ice Shelf itself to see how the expiration of such a gigantic section might affect its stability .
East Antarctica is home to some of the continent ’s most unchanging ice . Whileresearch published earlier this yearshows it is losing ice and has made measurable contributions to sea floor rise , the remoteness of the region have in mind scientists are still see more about it each twelvemonth .
https://gizmodo.com/this-weirdly-geometric-iceberg-is-freaking-us-out-1829917119
As swelled as D28 is , it ’s not the big to calve from Antarctica in late year . In 2017 , the Larsen C Ice Shelf molt an berg , nickname A68 , that valuate 5,800 square kilometers ( 2,240 straight miles ) in total expanse . Famously , A68 produced a small-scale crisphead lettuce in 2018 that wasweirdly geometricalin anatomy — an optic - grabbing structure known as a tabular iceberg .
AntarcticaIcebergsScience
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