An airborne ‘eye in the sky’ has provided unprecedented views and details of a massive iceberg calving from its parent glacier in Antarctica. Essentially, we’re able to watch the process of an iceberg being born. NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission discovered a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica. The mammoth rift extends at least 18 miles and is 50 meters deep, and scientists say it could produce an iceberg more than 800 square kilometers in size.
“We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it’s very exciting for us,” said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “It’s part of a natural process but it’s pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens. To my knowledge, no one has flown a lidar instrument over an actively developing rift such as this.”
Continue reading “An Iceberg Caught in the Act of Forming”