![]() ![]() Satellites carrying radar continue to deliver images regardless of the dark and bad weather, which is indispensable when monitoring the remote polar regions which are shrouded in darkness during the winter months. Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOĬaptured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission, the image above shows the berg on 5 July 2020, a few days before its third birthday. This wider-view image from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission shows A-68A’s position in February 2020. Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017–20), processed by ESA Antarctic Iceberg Tracking Database Rather unromantically, Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.Īlthough A-68A is a relatively thin iceberg, it has held together reasonably well, but satellites will be key to monitoring how it changes in open waters.Ī-68A path. More recently, in April 2020, A-68A lost another chunk: A-68C. ![]() However, it lost a chunk of ice almost immediately after being calved, resulting in it being renamed A-68A, and its offspring became A-68B. For the first two years, it remained close to its parent ice sheet, impeded by sea ice. Over the last three years, satellite missions such as Copernicus Sentinel-1 have been used to track the berg as it drifted in the Southern Ocean. Despite its size, however, it is remarkably thin, just a couple of hundred meters thick. When it calved, A-68 was about twice the size of Luxembourg and one of the largest icebergs on record, changing the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever. ![]()
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