In summer 2019, a rift that began to accelerate across the Brunt Ice Shelf threatened to release an iceberg about twice the size of New York City. But as another Antarctic summer comes to an end, the ice shelf stubbornly continues to hold together. It has even escaped—so far—collisions with numerous icebergs that drifted nearby and threatened to pummel the shelf like an icy wrecking ball.
Throughout the austral summer of 2021-22, bergs in the eastern Weddell Sea drifted south with the Antarctic Coastal Current. Iceberg A-23A—currently the world’s largest iceberg—floated freely after wiggling loose from the seafloor where it had been “grounded” (stuck) for decades. And in January 2022, Iceberg D-28 rounded the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue, floating roughly 4,300 kilometers (2,600 miles) from where it broke free of the Amery Ice Shelf in 2019.
A medley of large bergs ultimately converged near the Brunt Ice Shelf. The image above, acquired on March 6, 2022, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the bergs as they neared the end of their summer migration.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory