Aerial view of the rift across the Larsen ice shelf
Since ‘calving’, the iceberg has started to drift away, opening up a 5 km gap between itself and the remaining ice shelf.
As you can see from the photograph, the huge crack that created the iceberg grew over several years. However, at the end of May the rift grew by 16 km and in late June the movement of the ice increased again, reaching a rate of over 19 metres a day in some sections. The photograph shows that the rift was well over 150 km long. While it could remain in one piece, this enormous iceberg is likely to fragment into many smaller bergs. These will be carefully monitored because of their potential danger to shipping.
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