Giant slab of ice bigger than Majorca breaks away from edge of Antarctica

The newly carved berg picked up by satellites is officially the largest in the world
Ice cliffs at Weddell Sea Antarctica
Ice cliffs at Weddell Sea in Antarctica
66 north/Unsplash

A colossal chunk of ice has broken away from the frozen edge of Antarctica becoming the largest floating iceberg in the world, according to the European Space Agency.

The newly carved berg is larger than the Spanish island of Majorca and almost three times the size of London.

Recent satellite images spotted the enormous frozen oblong, designated A-76 by scientists, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission.

Its surface area spans 1,668 square miles and measures 106 miles long by 15 miles wide.

By comparison, Majorca in the Mediterranean occupies 1,405 square miles while London occupies a measly 606 square miles in comparison.

Scientists at the space agency shared a photo of the ice sheet in a statement on Wednesday.

First detected by the British Antarctic Survey, experts say the breakaway is not linked to climate change.

Handout photo of the largest iceberg currently afloat in the world
VIA REUTERS

The enormity of A-76, which broke away from Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf, ranks as the largest existing iceberg on the planet.

It surpasses the now second-place A-23A, about 1,305 square miles in size, among others floating in the Weddell Sea.

Another massive Antarctic iceberg that had threatened a penguin-populated island off the southern tip of South America has since lost much of its mass and broken into pieces, scientists said earlier this year.

The newly born iceberg was confirmed by the Maryland-based US National Ice Center using imagery from two polar-orbiting satellites.

The Ronne Ice Shelf near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the largest of several huge floating ice sheets that connect to the continent’s landmass and extend out into surrounding seas.

“Periodic calving of large chunks of those shelves is part of a natural cycle and the breaking off of A-76, which is likely to split into two or three pieces soon, is not linked to climate change,” said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The senior research scientist said the Ronne and another vast ice shelf, the Ross, have “behaved in a stable, quasi-periodic fashion” over the past century or more.

“Because the ice was already floating in the sea before dislodging from the coast, its break-away does not raise ocean levels,” he added.

Some ice shelves along the Antarctic peninsula, farther from the South Pole, have undergone rapid disintegration in recent years.

Scientists believe this phenomenon may be related to global warming, according to the US National Snow & Ice Data Center.

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