A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Las Vegas, broke off from one of Antarctica's most studied ice shelves, according to researchers. Satellite imagery showed the 147-square-mile iceberg, named A-83, breaking off from the Brunt Ice Shelf over several days late last month, as reported by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). The final break occurred in the early hours of May 20.
"This calving had been anticipated since the appearance of Halloween Crack eight years ago and has reduced the total area of the ice shelf to its smallest extent since monitoring began," said Oliver Marsh, a glaciologist who had spent four seasons working on the Brunt Ice Shelf and first detected the calving using GPS equipment.
The calving event was not believed to be linked to climate change, according to the British Antarctic Survey.
Icebergs, even large ones like those recently released from the ice shelf on Antarctica's southernmost continent, are part of a natural, cyclical process of growth and decay at the boundaries of Earth’s ice sheets, NASA explains.
Despite the relatively cold conditions in Antarctica, there have been three significant iceberg calving events in four years from the nearly 500-foot-thick ice shelf, noted Adrian Luckman, a professor at Swansea University who studies Antarctic ice shelves.
"The Brunt Ice Shelf is yielding abundant data to aid our understanding of the calving process and to predict the future development of these crucial ice formations," he added.
