Massive iceberg spotted breaking off Antarctica in major calving event
A huge iceberg the size of Sydney has broken away from east Antarctica, but scientists aren't blaming the fracture on climate change.
The 1,636-square-kilometre iceberg 'calved' from the Amery Ice Shelf last week and the National Ice Centre in the US has officially named it D28.
According to The European Union Earth Observation Programme the iceberg is five times the size of island nation Malta.
The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could now pose a potential hazard to shipping.
The moment many of us have been waiting for: Amery Ice Shelf's "Loose Tooth" finally calves an iceberg. Didn't quite predict this one right back in 2002, only 4 years off! https://t.co/pqw4VeVyH2 Thanks to@NASA_ICE
for the imagery! https://t.co/PxErcwLKPl— Helen Amanda Fricker (@helenafricker) September 30, 2019
The huge rift, at an area dubbed the 'loose tooth', was first noticed at the front of the ice shelf in the early 2000s and has been closely monitored since.
"We don't think this event is linked to climate change," Scripps Institution of Oceanography Professor Helen Amanda Fricker said on Tuesday.
"It's part of the ice shelf's normal cycle, where we see major calving events every 60-to-70 years," she added.
The last major iceberg to break off the Amery shelf, located between Australia's Davis and Mawson research stations, was in late 1963 or early 1964.
Scientists expected the latest calving to be at a different spot.
"We knew it would happen eventually, but just to keep us all on our toes, it is not exactly where we expected it to be," Professor Fricker said.
With 1583km² it is large enough to be named by NIC, but still small relative to some of the largest icebergs in history https://t.co/6yTcyJY274
— Stef Lhermitte (@StefLhermitte) September 30, 2019
The new iceberg won't impact sea levels, as it was already floating.
"Much like an ice cube in a glass of water," Australian Antarctic Division Glaciologist Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi explained.
"What will be interesting to see is how the loss of this ice will influence the ocean melting under the remaining ice shelf and the speed at which the ice flows off the continent."
Ice shelves are a floating extension of land ice and are formed by snow pushing out to the continent's edge.
—With AAP
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