Massive Antarctic Iceberg Has Officially Broken Off

On Wednesday, scientists announced that the Larson C ice shelf has officially broken off. This event has been highly anticipated by scientists for a while now and is now considered as one of the largest iceberg ever recorded in history.

In fact, the iceberg is actually more than 2,200 square miles in area and weighs a trillion tons. Scientists have even estimated that the iceberg has a volume twice that of Lake Erie in North America and is more than three times the size of Delaware. Though scientists predicted that this iceberg would break off for a while now, they didn’t expect this unusually large size.

Professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University said in a statement to CNN, “We have been anticipating this event for months, and have been surprised how long it took for the rift to break through the final few kilometers of ice. This is part of the normal behavior of ice shelves. What makes this unusual is the size.”

The iceberg, which is expected to be named A68 soon, wont have a large sea level change. However, if it were added to the ocean it would push over 3 millimeters of global sea level rise. Luckily, there isn’t much danger expected for the future for people, land, or ships, but the future for Antarctica’s rising sea levels is worrisome.

Unfortunately, on the other hand, it is hard to predict the future for this ice berg; however, scientists suggested that the iceberg will most likely stay in the area for a long period of time. In the future, the iceberg is expected to break off into fragments and some may drift into warmer waters. Furthermore, the iceberg is expected to be around for years, if not an entire decade.

Many scientists agreed that the breaking of the iceberg was attributed to global warming, but others disagreed due to the context of climate change.