Iceberg Breaks away from Antarctica- News World India(13-07-2017) at 9:30 PM

Giant iceberg breaks away

A massive iceberg weighing more than one trillion tons has broken away from western Antarctica, according to a UK-based research team.
Scientists from Project MIDAS had been monitoring a break in the Larsen C ice shelf -- the fourth-largest in Antarctica -- following the collapse of the Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and had observed significant advances in the rift over the past 12 months. Experts said a 5,800-square-kilometer (2,239-square-mile) section of Larsen C was confirmed to have broken away between Monday and Wednesday by NASA's Aqua MODIS satellite.
"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," professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University, lead investigator of the MIDAS project said in a statement. He told CNN the team believes the iceberg has remained intact adding, "This is part of the normal behavior of ice shelves. What makes this unusual is the size." Scientists believe the iceberg -- likely to be named A68 -- has a volume twice that of Lake Erie in North America and is more than three times the size of the greater London area. It's half the size of the largest iceberg ever recorded: B15. With an area of 11,007 square kilometers (4,250 square miles) -- about the size of the state of Connecticut or the island of Jamaica -- it calved off Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. With the iceberg now floating independently, the area of Larsen C has been reduced by more than 12%, forever changing the landscape of the peninsula, according to experts.