World’s largest iceberg breaks off Antarctica

British Antarctic Survey on research mission to study A-68a iceberg

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has dubbed the newborn iceberg A-76, and it was spotted by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. The organisation posted pictures to its website showing the monstrous slab of ice. And they added it exceeds the size of Spain’s largest tourist island.

The iceberg’s total size is 4,320 square km (1,668 square miles).

A-76 is an elongated mass, 175 kilometres (106 miles) front to tip, and 25km (15 miles) wide.

The iceberg now resides in the Weddell Sea, and also surpasses the size of the US State of Rhode Island.

The US National Ice Center corroborated the ESA’s findings with imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite. 

A-76 emerged from the Ronne Ice Shelf, located near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. 

It is one of several to have come from the outcrop over the last few years, but not a direct result of climate change. 

Ted Scambos, a research glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder said its presence would not raise ocean levels. 

A-76 blows past the former largest, its neighbour A-23A, by more than 300 square miles.

A-23A is roughly 3,380 square km (1,305 square miles) in size and also broke into the Weddell Sea.

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