Categories: EarthEarth ObservationSatellites

This is Currently the World’s Largest Iceberg

An enormous iceberg has calved from the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf, lying in the Weddell Sea, in Antarctica. Image by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. Credit: ESA

A gigantic chunk of ice recently broke off from an ice shelf in Antarctica, and is currently the world’s largest iceberg. The iceberg, dubbed A-76, measures around 4,320 square km (1,670 square miles) in size. At 170 km (106 miles) in length and 25 km (15 miles) wide, the iceberg is slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, and bigger than the state of Rhode Island in the US.

A-76 was captured in the above image by ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite. Below is an animation of the iceberg calving off the Ronne Ice Shelf.

This animation of images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission shows the giant slab of ice breaking off from the Ronne Ice Shelf, lying in the Weddell Sea, on 13 May 2021. Credit: ESA

While A-76 is huge, it’s not the biggest ever. It is only about one-third the size of the biggest iceberg in recorded history, B-15 which calved off of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf 21 years ago. The B-15 iceberg covered more than 10,878 square km (4,200 square miles) when it broke away, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory

The iceberg was spotted by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed with the Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery. The Sentinel-1 mission consists of two polar-orbiting satellites that rely on C-band synthetic aperture radar imaging, which can take images day or night. This allows almost constant year-round viewing of remote regions like Antarctica.

Icebergs are named based on the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, with then a sequential number when the iceberg breaks off. Antarctica is divided into quadrants, with the letters A, B, C and D used to denote the different regions. A-76 was spotted in the Bellingshausen/Weddell Sea quadrant and was the 76th iceberg tracked by the U.S. National Ice Center.

Source: ESA

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004. She is the author of a new book on the Apollo program, "Eight Years to the Moon," which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible. Her first book, "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond.