WORLD’S LARGEST ICEBERG BREAKS OFF ANTARCTICA: EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

Thu 20 May 2021:

A huge iceberg, the world’s largest, has broken off from an ice shelf in Antarctica and is floating through the Weddell Sea, the European Space Agency said Thursday.

Called A-76 and roughly the shape of Manhattan but more than 70 times bigger, it was picked up on satellite images and is “currently the largest berg in the world”, the ESA said.

New giant #iceberg breaking away from the Ronne Ice Shelf 13-05-2021 roughly 160 km x 25 km satellite image from @polarview @CopernicusEU #Sentinel1 pic.twitter.com/LmacupcuUW

— Keith Makinson (@KeithMakinson1) May 13, 2021

The iceberg is shaped like a giant ironing board, measuring around 170 kilometers (105 miles) in length and 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in width. That makes it slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, ESA said.

ESA said the iceberg was first spotted by Keith Makinson, a polar oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey last week and confirmed from the US National Ice Center using ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery.

The huge chunk of ice is now officially known as the A-76.

The name might sound a bit boring for the world’s largest iceberg, but it is based on science. ESA said icebergs are traditionally named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.

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