(Sciencr) An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan, 100-square-mile (259 km²), just broke off from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. A worrying sign with regards to future sea level rise.
Pine Island Glacier (PIG) is the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica—one that’s responsible for a quarter of the frozen continent’s ice loss, around 45 billion tons of ice each year. Satellite images taken on 26 September show an open-water gap emerging between the ice shelf and the iceberg, which is about two thirds the size of the Isle of Wight (103 square miles or 267 km²).
The new iceberg appears to be quite unstable, producing a batch of smaller icebergs as it slowly drifts out to sea. The new berg is not nearly as big as the one that broke off the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf a few months ago—an enormous chunk of ice that measures about 2,240 square miles (5,800 km²).