NASA shares {photograph} of a peculiar rectangular iceberg in Antarctica
Jan 20, 2023, 05:22 pm
NASA just lately posted an image of an iceberg in Antarctica, however it isn’t a standard one.
Whereas icebergs with straight edges usually are not uncommon, icebergs with two straight edges that meet at a proper angle-like a rectangle— are definitely peculiar.
This {photograph} was snapped in 2018 as a part of Operation IceBridge, NASA’s longest-running aerial survey of polar ice.
Why does this story matter?
- Who would have thought {that a} near-perfect, sharp-edged rectangular iceberg can be floating in Antarctica? Properly, that’s what it’s.
- Knowledge from the IceBridge mission, together with this “unusual” iceberg, assist scientists higher perceive the impact of local weather change on Earth’s polar areas.
- Based on NASA, Operation IceBridge is the most important airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice.
The image was snapped from a low-flying plane
“An image of sea ice extending to the horizon, taken from a low-flying plane. The place the ocean peeks by means of the ice is darkish blue,” reads the picture’s description.
The {photograph}, shot by Jeremy Harbeck, has been shared by NASA on its Instagram account. It has garnered over 664,180 likes up to now in about 13 hours for the reason that submit went dwell.
The “unusual” iceberg has easy and straight edges
The oblong iceberg takes the middle stage within the image however is lower off to the left of the picture. The seen portion of the iceberg seems to be nearly completely rectangular, with easy and straight edges and two exact proper angles for corners.
The iceberg is assumed to have damaged away from Larsen-C
The oblong iceberg is meant to have chipped off from Larsen C, a big ice shelf within the northwestern Weddell Sea extending into the japanese coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.
In July 2017, the identical Larsen C ice shelf shed the large A68 iceberg, which has a floor space measuring roughly 6,000 sq. kilometers – nearly the scale of Delaware state within the US.
The period of Operation IceBridge spanned from 2009 to 2019
Operation IceBridge, between 2009 to 2019, deployed plane loaded with particular gear to fly over Earth’s polar areas to review sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers. This mission has helped scientists perceive how Earth’s polar ice is altering in response to local weather change.
IceBridge additionally helped bridge the hole in polar observations between NASA’s ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite tv for pc) missions.