The famous rectangular iceberg in Antarctica, photographed by NASA in mid-October, broke away from the Larsen Ice Shelf a year ago and during this time experienced many collisions with other icebergs. NASA's Earth Matters blog talks about this.
The iceberg with unusually right angles was captured by agency specialist Jeremy Harbeck during a flight as part of the IceBridge polar ice research program. Initially, due to the shape of the iceberg, scientists assumed that it had just broken away from the Larsen Ice Shelf.
However, the analysis of satellite images showed that the iceberg formed back in November 2017, just a few months after another huge iceberg, dubbed A-68, broke away from the glacier. At that time, the iceberg was about four kilometers long. Then the iceberg began to move north: as noted in the report, on the way it constantly collided with other ice, lost more than two kilometers in length and gradually "sharpened" to its current shape, visible in the Landsat 8 satellite image taken on October 14, in two days prior to IceBridge flight.
Larsen Ice Shelf and icebergs next to it.
“By November 2018, the iceberg had gone out into open water - now it's just another mass of ice on the way to its own death,” - said in a message NASA.
Olga Dobrovidova