Watch: New iceberg larger than Las Vegas breaks off Antarctic ice shelf, satellite imagery shows

Watch: New iceberg larger than Las Vegas breaks off Antarctic ice shelf, satellite imagery shows

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A 40-mile-wide iceberg in Antarctica, the largest in the world and weighing a whopping 1 trillion tons, is on the move after decades grounded to the sea floor, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) announced.

WEDDEL SEA, Antarctica – A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Las Vegas, has broken off from one of the most studied ice shelves in Antarctica, according to researchers.

Satellite imagery shows the 147-square-mile iceberg, named A-83, breaking off from the Brunt Ice Shelf over several days late this month, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) said. The final break happened in the early hours of May 20.

HEAR IT: SPECTACULAR ICE CALVING AT ARGENTINA’S PERITO MORENO GLACIER ECHOS THUNDEROUS SPLASH ACROSS RESERVE

A new iceberg, named A-83, broke off from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica over the course of several days in late May.

A new iceberg, named A-83, broke off from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica over the course of several days in late May.

(CSU/CIRA & NOAA/NESDIS)

“This calving was expected since the appearance of Halloween Crack eight years ago and reduces the total area of the ice shelf to its smallest extent since monitoring began,” said Oliver Marsh, a glaciologist who has spent four seasons working on the Brunt Ice Shelf and first detected the calving from GPS equipment.

The calving is not thought to be linked to climate change, the British Antarctic Survey notes.

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Icebergs, even large ones like those recently released from the ice shelf on the southernmost continent, are part of a natural, cyclical process of growth and decay at the limits of Earth’s ice sheets, according to NASA.

A large wedge of ice broke from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in late May 2024, the most recent in a series of notable icebergs spawned by the shelf in the past few years.

A large wedge of ice broke from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in late May 2024, the most recent in a series of notable icebergs spawned by the shelf in the past few years.

(NASA)

Even in this relatively frigid region of Antarctica, there have been three significant iceberg calvings in four years from the nearly 500-foot-thick ice shelf, said Adrian Luckman, a professor at Swansea University who studies Antarctic ice shelves.

“The Brunt Ice Shelf is providing plenty of data to help us understand the calving process and predict the future evolution of these important ice bodies,” he adds.