A giant slab of ice has sheared off from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg currently afloat in the world, says the European Space Agency. The enormous oblong iceberg, designated A-76, was spotted in satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. Its surface area spans 4,320 sq km and measures 175 km long by 25 km wide.
The A-76 ranks as the largest existing iceberg on the planet, surpassing the A-23A, which is about 3,380 sq km in size and also floating in the Weddell Sea.
The Ronne Ice Shelf on the flank of the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the largest of several enormous floating sheets of ice that connect to the continent’s landmass and extend out into the surrounding seas. Periodic shearing off of large chunks of those shelves is part of a natural cycle. But some ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have undergone rapid disintegration in recent years, a phenomenon scientists believe may be related to climate change.
Picture Credit : Google
