A huge piece of ice floating freely in the Weddell Sea, located between the Antarctic Peninsula in the west and Cotes Land in the east, is almost twice the area of the capital of Russia.
A huge iceberg broke from the Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica's Weddell Sea, the European Space Agency reported. The area of a giant drifting block of ice, called A-76, was estimated at 4320 square kilometers.
According to satellite images, the A-76 is about 170 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide. It is slightly larger than Mallorca - one of the Balearic Islands in Spain - and almost twice as large as Moscow.
Meet the new cool kid on the iceberg block: the recently calved # A76 is now the biggest iceberg in the world!
The iceberg was spotted by @BAS_News and confirmed from @usnatice using @CopernicusEU # Sentinel1 imagery.
Here's how it looked on 16 May? Https: //t.co/GgFk6kIJLv pic.twitter.com/xOVWjidsZw
- ESA EarthObservation (@ESA_EO) May 19, 2021
According to scientists, this is the largest iceberg in the world since the A68, registered in July 2017 and now partially destroyed. For comparison: the area of A-74, which broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf in February this year, is only 1270 square kilometers.
Initially, the A-76 was discovered by the British Antarctic Service, then the information was confirmed by photos received from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission: it includes two satellites in polar orbit, using C-band synthetic aperture radar images. Thanks to this program, remote regions of the planet can be observed all year round and at any time of the day.