An enormous iceberg, a little bigger than the state of Rhode Island, has broken off of Antarctica. The iceberg is named A-76, after the Antarctic quadrant where it was first spotted, was captured by the European Union's Copernicus Sentinel, a two-satellite constellation that orbits Earth's poles.The satellites confirmed an earlier observation made by the British Antarctic Survey, which was the first organization to notice the iceberg after it broke off of the Ronne Ice Shelf. It is more than 40 times the size of Paris, larger than the state of Rhode Island and 73 times as big as Manhattan. Iceberg A-76 is currently the biggest iceberg in the world.
Why does this matter? Per the DCists: “Sea levels are rising twice as fast in th Washington D.C. Area compared to the global average. Even though D.C. isn't on the ocean, both the Potomac and Anacostia rivers are influenced by the ocean's tides and sea level. Relative sea level on the two rivers—and throughout the Chesapeake Bay region—is rising more quickly than elsewhere, because at the same time the water is rising (from melting glaciers and expanding oceans), the land here is sinking.”
Thankfully, LiveScience reported on Thursday that the Iceberg A-76 will not directly impact sea levels and periodic calving of ice shelves is part of a natural cycle. Ted Scambos, a research glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told Reuters that this calving does not appear to be linked to climate change. This is because the ice shelf was already floating in the sea before breaking off, so the event does not raise ocean levels, whereas glaciers and ice sheets, found on land, do raise sea levels when they break off into the ocean.
However, while shelves pretty regularly lose ice, scientists tie worryingly rapid loss to the impacts of a warming climate. A January paper published in the journal Science Advances found that ice losses have soared from 760 billion tons annually in the 1990s to more than 1.2 trillion tons in the 2010s.
Image: Stock photo, unsplash