NASA Monitors Large Drifting Iceberg B31

Posted on April 25, 2014

NASA is monitoring a drifting iceberg, named B31, which is six times the size of Manhattan. NASA also refers to it as an "ice island." The National Ice Center reported on April 11, 2014 that B31 is 33 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide (18 by 11 nautical wiles). It is believed to be 500 meters thick. The large iceberg separated from the front of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier in early November 2013. NASA says B31 will likely be swept up soon in the swift currents of the Southern Ocean.

Kelly Brunt, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, says in a statement, "Iceberg calving is a very normal process. However, the detachment rift, or crack, that created this iceberg was well upstream of the 30-year average calving front of Pine Island Glacier (PIG), so this a region that warrants monitoring."

The Guardian quotes Dr. Bethan Davies, a research scientist at the University of Reading, as saying the iceberg is not in a busy shipping area at the moment, but this could change. She told Sky News, "It's floating off into the sea and will get caught up in the current and flow around the Antarctica continent where there are ships." She says it could take a year or more for the iceberg to melt.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) - an instrument on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites - captured a series of images of ice island B31 over the past several months. Here is a time-lapse video showing the motion of the ice. Take a look:



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