NASA satellites showed the birth of a new iceberg the size of Chicago: incredible footage

Incredible footage captured by NASA satellites shows a large block, dubbed A-84, breaking away from the Georg VI ice shelf along the Antarctic coast. The newborn iceberg is approximately 595 square meters in size, meaning it is the size of the city of Chicago, in the US state of Illinois.

Of course, A-84 is far from being as large as the world's largest iceberg, known as A23a, which is approximately 3,360 square kilometers. Experts believe that the broken off chunk of ice could flip or topple over as it melts and breaks apart in the open ocean, DailyMail reports.

The video of the birth of a new iceberg from NASA's Earth Observatory consists of 21 images received from satellites between January 15 and February 15, 2025.

In the accelerated footage, you can see how the iceberg A-84, which breaks off near the southern edge of the Georg VI ice shelf, falls along the Antarctic Peninsula and heads towards South America.

The block of ice then floats down Ronne Inlet (a bay that rests against the southern edge of the shelf glacier) past Smiley Island, and then heads in a northwesterly direction toward the Southern Ocean, the researchers describe.

NASA's Earth Observatory reported that the iceberg drifted about 250 km from its origin within a month.

"I am amazed at how fast it moved in the coastal current. It makes me wonder what's going on in the water beneath the shelf glacier," said scientist Christopher Schuman.

According to the researchers, iceberg breakup is a normal phenomenon for a shelf glacier, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

However, factors such as warming air and water, together with a decrease in protective sea ice, can accelerate all processes and lead to collapse, as happened to several shelf glaciers along the Antarctic Peninsula.

Observations made by researchers in the early 1940s, and later by remote sensing, show that the George VI Glacier is losing its shelf ice. Scientists will continue to make observations.

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