Iceberg A-74 broke off from Antarctica ’s Brunt Ice Shelfback in Marchand since then it has been hang about . Easterly winds in Early August started push the iceberg about and it came extremely close to a prodigious hit .
In orbiter radar images enchant by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 missionary station , we can see the bm of the massive crisphead lettuce from August 9 to 18 . The floating glacial chunk is 1,270 square kilometre ( 490.3 straight knot ) , slightly small than Los Angeles . It passed very close to the westerly tip of Brunt and investigator were concerned that it might hit it .
The crisphead lettuce used to be the North Brunt and it is now A-74 . Icebergs from the southernmost continent are named from the Antarctic quarter-circle in which they were in the beginning sighted , then a sequential number . If the berg breaks aside then it also gets a consecutive letter .
The intact region is of concern for glaciologists , as monumental abstruse crackshave mold in the 150 - meter ( 492 - foot ) fatheaded ice ledge . If A-74 had hit the so - call in West Brunt , it might have create an iceberg even larger than itself . The whole region is in an extremely delicate state and Brobdingnagian fling can be see in the satellite observations .
“ The olfactory organ - regulate piece of the ice shelf , which is even larger than A-74 stay connected to the Brunt Ice Shelf , but barely . If the berg had collide more violently with this piece , it could have speed up the fracture of the remain meth bridge , causing it to break away . We will remain to routinely monitor the situation using Sentinel satellite imaging , ” The European Space Agency ’s Mark Drinkwater said in astatement .
The office got so worrying for such a long time that the British Antarctic Survey had to move its Halley VI Research Station inland to make certain that it would not be carried away in the formation of icebergs . The station is made up of eight interlinked pods on skis , so it was easily slid 20 kilometers ( 12 miles ) away from the form chasms .
It is currently wintertime in Antarctica which means darkness . Luckily , radar images do n’t require sun to go after changes to the crank . The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission will stay on to track the changes to this frail region of Antarctica .
