Rectangular iceberg image full#

In 2017, an iceberg the size of Delaware broke off from Larsen C. Larsen A collapsed in 1995, and Larsen B collapsed in 2002. “In Greenland, you would not find these rectangular bergs so much because it is warmer, icebergs break into smaller pieces and the glaciers are smaller as well.” Melting AntarcticaĪn ice shelf is a large, floating chunk of ice attached to a nearby land mass, and Larsen C is just the latest on the frontline. “The 'bergs detaching from Larsen C are so big, they look perfectly rectangular or with linear features because they were created from rifts that run across the ice shelf for hundreds of kilometers straight,” he notes. Read about how the rules of life are being ripped apart.)Įric Rignot, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and a professor at UC Irvine, agrees that Larsen C's massive size created the rectangular shape. As it calved, the iceberg may have been smooth and flat underneath, but ocean currents would have quickly changed it. Typically, only 10 percent of an iceberg is visible above the water. The ice has time to spread out and become perfectly flat,” Poinar adds, so when an iceberg breaks off from a large ice shelf along an existing fissure, it looks like a large, flat rectangle.

Rectangular iceberg image full#

“ look like these beautiful pristine white things from a distance, but if you look a little closer, they're really mangled and full of cracks,” she says. Tabular icebergs are more common than people realize. Ice shelfs are full of fractures and fissures, explains geophysicist Kristin Poinar from the University at Buffalo. “If you total the tons of ice, it would fill every swimming pool in California several times over,” he says, noting that it's only a small piece compared to the ice floating around Antarctica. Senior research scientist Ted Scambos with the University of Colorado at Boulder says the iceberg is in the ballpark of 130 feet tall and anywhere from a mile or two long. “The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf,” NASA tweeted, referring to the Larsen C ice shelf. Operation IceBridge is a research initiative created to better understand how the poles influence Earth's climate, and it uses a fleet of research planes to regularly collect information. NASA's IceBridge aircraft spotted the iceberg during a routine aerial survey. The iceberg sits like a giant floating sheet cake near the east coast of the Antarctic peninsula. It's an iceberg, shared online by NASA last Wednesday, that appears to be in the shape of a perfect rectangle with smooth, even walls, and 90-degree angles. In a world besieged by climate change-induced chaos and disruption, one satisfying image of order has emerged.