A huge iceberg, with an area equivalent to 15 times the size of Paris, broke off Antarctica on Sunday, British scientists said on Monday.
The block of ice, which totals 1,550 square kilometers, protruded on Sunday, between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in Lisbon, during a tide that widened an existing fissure, detailed the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a research organization on the polar areas. . , in a sentence.
Two years ago, an iceberg of practically identical size had formed in the same area, named Brunt Barrier, on which the British Halley VI research station is installed.
Glaciologists, who are on the ground from November to March, have been observing the increase in large fissures in the ice for a decade.
In 2016, BAS had decided to move its station 20 kilometers, fearing it would end up on a drifting iceberg due to melting ice.
“The detachment was expected and constitutes a natural behavior of the Brunt Barrier. It is not linked to climate change,” said glaciologist Dominic Hodgson, quoted in the text.
However, the continent is suffering the impact of global warming, with record temperatures recorded in 2022, like the rest of the planet.
The extent of the ice in February 2022 reached the minimum of 44 years of satellite records, recently indicated the annual report of the European program on climate change, Copernicus.
In 2021, the total melting of an iceberg, four thousand kilometers from where it broke off the ice block, in 2017, had released more than 150 billion tons of fresh water mixed with nutrients and reinforced the concern of scientists about the impact of the phenomenon. in a fragile ecosystem.
Source: TSF
