Watch scientists fly over colossal crack left by new Antarctic iceberg

For years, the cracks grew. And in mid-February 2021, a new massive Antarctic iceberg was born.

The British Antarctic Survey released footage last week of the grand crack left by 490 square-mile iceberg A74 (it's larger than Los Angeles), which snapped off Antarctica's Brunt Ice shelf. (An ice shelf is the end, or tongue, of a massive ice sheet that floats over the ocean.) Antarctic researchers knew the ice shelf would inevitably shed a big berg, but the question was when.

"Predicting ice cracks on an ice shelf is almost like predicting when an earthquake is going to occur," Anna Hogg, a polar researcher specializing in satellite observations at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the University of Leeds, told Mashable in 2019.  Read more...

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from Mashable https://ift.tt/380wzYr