File:Antarctic Ice Shelf Sheds Massive Iceberg (MODIS 2017-07-28).jpg

English: Sometime between July 10 and July 12, an iceberg about the size of Delaware split off from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf. Now that nearly 5,800 square kilometers (2,200 square miles) of ice has broken away, the Larsen C shelf area has shrunk by approximately 10 percent. Larsen C, a floating platform of glacial ice on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula, is the fourth-largest ice shelf on the coast of Antarctica. In 2014, a crack that had been slowly growing in the ice shelf for decades suddenly turned northward and accelerated, creating today’s iceberg.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a false-color image of the new iceberg on July 12, 2017. The false-color view uses MODIS band 31, which measures infrared signals known as “brightness temperature.” This measurement is useful for distinguishing the relative warmth or coolness of a landscape. Dark blue depicts where the surface is the warmest—most notably between the new iceberg and the ice shelf, but also in areas of open ocean or where water is topped by thin sea ice. Lighter blue colors show intact or thicker ice (cooler surfaces).

The large Iceberg was named A-68 by the U.S. National Ice Center. Massive icebergs typically begin to break apart into smaller pieces rapidly, and A-68 wasted no time beginning the process. By July 26 the forces of the ocean’s currents, tides and winds had taken a toll on the big berg, breaking A-68 into two bergs, which were named A-68a and A-68B, as well as a handful of pieces too small to be named.