Ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctic hold enough frozen water to lift oceans a dozen metres (40 feet), drowning cities and redrawing the planet's coastlines.Īt 5,800 km 2, 350 meters thick and weighing a trillion tons A-68 was one of the largest icebergs ever seen. The monstrous A-68 iceberg calved in 2017 from the Larsen ice shelf, which has warmed faster than any other part of Earth's southernmost continent. It may be a giant, but A-76 is by no means the largest iceberg in recent years. It joins previous world's largest title holder A-23A-approximately 3,880 sq km in size-which has remained in the same area since 1986.Ī-76 was originally spotted by the British Antarctic Survey and the calving-the term used when an iceberg breaks off-was confirmed using images from the Copernicus satellite, the European Space Agency said. The iceberg, measuring around 170 kilometres (105 miles) long and 25 kilometres wide, with an area of 4,320 square kilometres is now floating in the Weddell Sea. Slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, A-76 had been monitored by scientists since May 13 when it began to separate from the Ronne Ice Shelf, according to the US National Ice Center. It is the latest in a series of large ice blocks to dislodge in a region acutely vulnerable to climate change, although scientists said in this case it appeared to be part of a natural polar cycle.
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