An enormous iceberg has broken off of Antarctica. The chunk of ice, which is roughly 170 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide, was spotted by satellites as it calved from the western side of Antarctica’s Ronne Ice Shelf, according to the European Space Agency. The berg is now floating freely on the Weddell Sea, a large bay in the western Antarctic where explorer Ernest Shackleton once lost his ship, the Endurance, to pack ice. The 4,320 square kilometers iceberg—which now the world’s biggest and has been called A-76.
The humongous chunk of ice calved from the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Credit: ESA and Earth Observation
— source scientificamerican.com | May 20, 2021