A giant ice sheet larger than the Spanish island of Majorca has separated from Antarctica In the Weddell Sea, To become the largest iceberg in the world today. It was spotted by the European Space Agency.

The glacier, which scientists called A-76, was spotted in recent satellite images taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission.On its website, the space agency showed a picture of the gigantic, rectangular ice sheet. Its surface extends over an area of ​​4,320 square kilometers It is 175 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide. In comparison, the popular Spanish tourist island of Majorca, the largest in the Mediterranean, occupies an area of ​​3,640 square kilometers. Another example closer to us: The A-76 is roughly the same as Molise, which has an area of ​​4,612 square kilometers.

The A-76, which split off from Ronne Ice Shelf, ranks as the largest iceberg present on the planet, surpassing A-23A, at about 3,380 square kilometers, Which also floats in the Weddell Sea. Instead, another giant iceberg in Antarctica, which threatened a penguin island off the southern tip of South America, has since lost much of its mass and shattered into pieces earlier this year. Leesburg A-74 Which separated from the Brent ice shelf, also in Antarctica, in February of this year, amounted to 1,270 square kilometers, The size of Los Angeles.

The rune ice shelf, on one side of the Antarctic Peninsula, is one of the largest number of massive floating ice layers that connect to the landmass of the continent and extend into the surrounding seas. The periodic separation of large pieces from these pallets is part of a natural cycle. But Some ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have undergone rapid disintegration in recent years, a phenomenon some scientists believe may be linked to climate change., Secondo il US National Snow and Snow Data Center.

Not everyone agrees, However. According to Ted Scampos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Ron Board and another large ice shelf, called Ross, have “behaved in a stable, quasi-periodic fashion” for the past century or more. Since the ice was already floating in the sea before separating from the coast, the launch would not increase ocean levels, He argues. Imagine an A-76 could soon split into two or three parts.

When in doubt, the A-76 is A great reminder to accelerate the green transition to a more sustainable economy To reduce carbon dioxide cycles and contain global warming below 1.5 degrees by 2030.