Iceberg the size of a country is about to break off from Antarctica

Scientists predict one of the largest ice breaks in history is about to happen as the 5,000 km wide iceberg²separated from the Antarctic ice shelf.

A giant iceberg measuring 5,000 square kilometres is about to break away from the Antarctic ice shelf. Photo: Guardian.

A giant iceberg the size of Trinidad and Tobago is about to break off from Larsen C, a large ice shelf in Antarctica, the Guardian reports.

Scientists' research shows that the iceberg is 5,000 km wide.²The ice shelf is only connected to the ice shelf by a 20-km-long strip of ice, after a rift that has been forming for more than a decade suddenly widened significantly last month.

"After several months of stability, the rift suddenly widened by 18 km in the second half of December 2016. The iceberg, which is a quarter the size of Wales, is only connected to its mother ice shelf by a 20 km long ice strip," said Professor Adrian Luckman, a scientist at Swansea University, UK.

According to Professor Luckman, when this iceberg breaks away, it will fundamentally change the landscape in Antarctica and promote larger cracks on the Larsen C ice shelf.

Ice shelves are huge masses of ice that float hundreds of meters thick at the edge of glaciers. Scientists fear that their disappearance will destabilize Antarctica’s inland glaciers. While calving icebergs do not contribute to rising sea levels, ice shelf collapses could.

“The iceberg breaking away just makes the whole ice shelf less stable. If it collapses, there is nothing holding the glaciers together and they start to drift faster,” said Martin O’Leary, another researcher at Swansea University.

O'Leary also stressed that the ice sheet is a natural process that occurs every decade and is not due to the effects of climate change, but the disintegration of a large ice shelf can accelerate the melting of glaciers, causing the ocean to warm.

Several ice shelves have broken up in the northern Antarctic region in recent years, including the Larsen B ice shelf that broke up in 2002.

According to VNE