The world’s largest iceberg has broken off from the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. At around 4,320 square km in size it is larger than many islands (Mumbai, for comparison, is around 603 square km in area).
The slab of ice, which scientists have named A-76, was spotted in satellite images from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. As many outlets have noted, it is larger even that the Spanish island of Majorca.
A-76 does not beat the size of the previous largest iceberg, B-15, which discovered in 2000 and that had a surface area of 11,000 square kilometres before it broke apart into several small icebergs.
Scientists speaking to Reuters noted that the iceberg’s breakaway was not a result of climate change.
Periodic calving of large chunks of those shelves is part of a natural cycle, and the breaking off of A-76, which is likely to split into two or three pieces soon, is not linked to climate change, Ted Scambos, a research glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told Reuters. He added that it would not raise ocean levels either as most of the ice was already floating on the sea before dislodging from the coast.
An animation of satellite images released by the ESA shows how the iceberg broke away.