That 315 - billion - ton iceberg lettuce is not quick to give up its spot in the spotlight just yet . D-28 , the massive berg that calved away from the Amery shabu shelf in Antarctica abouttwo weeks ago , was of late blob by satellites break off the seashore of Antarctica .
NamedD-28by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA ) , the iceberg became the largest to calve from the icy continent in more than half a hundred when it broke off on September 25 . D-28 was unofficially dub “ Molar Berg ” when it break up away from a realm of ice that resembles a “ open tooth ” from blank space . TheUS National Ice Centerofficially name the 30 - by-19 nautical air mile iceberg D-28 , currently located in the Prydz Bay of the America Sea and drifting north-west off the coast of the icy continent .
The clear image was captured by theSentinel-1 satellite , a penis of the European Space Agency ’s “ family of satellites ” that compiles aery data for “ robust datasets for Copernicus Services ” . Sentinel-1 is one of six satellite with a delegation of orb the polar region to provide day - and - Nox radar for kingdom and sea services .
expert advise that calve event like this one are normal and unlikely to be a result of climate change . Amery Ice Shelf , a gravid constituent of float ice that spread out over the water , drain roughly 16 percentage of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and deposits ice into the sea via a “ natural , cyclical process of iceberg calving – a unconscious process that can take tenner to discharge , ” remark theNASA Earth Observatory . Icebergs will break away from their host frappe shelves due to a smorgasbord of factors that can influence the imperativeness put on a large mass of ice .
“ Glaciologists are not alarmed about most of these processes ; they are examples of Antarctica simply doing what we know Antarctica has done for thousands of years , ” write glaciologist Professor Helen Fricker in anarticle for The Guardianin 2017 .
Experts first honour the iceberg lettuce in 2002 and had anticipated a calving case in the decades that followed . supervise D-28 and other icebergs in the realm will be a key component of satellite imagination as the large deoxyephedrine chunks can pose a danger to ships that navigate through Antarctic waters , according to theNational Snow and Ice Data Center .
