A large wedge of ice broke from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in late May 2024, the most recent in a series of notable icebergs spawned by the shelf in the past few years.
A large wedge of ice broke from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf in late May 2024, the most recent in a series of notable icebergs spawned by the shelf in the past few years.
Soon after the break, the TIRS-2 (Thermal Infrared Sensor-2) on Landsat 9 captured this pair of false-color images. They are part of a special expanded data collection program called LEAP (Landsat Extended Acquisitions of the Poles), which since 2022 has been building year-round image records of glaciers, ice shelves, and sea ice around Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic Ocean.
Thermal images like these can help scientists keep watch over Earth’s polar areas, even when the Sun is below the horizon and visible images are unavailable. In these images, acquired on May 20 (left) and May 22 (right), yellows and oranges indicate areas where temperatures are warmer, like open water or thin sea ice, while blues denote areas of colder temperatures, like the thicker ice of the iceberg and ice shelf. Notice that the iceberg is already on the move, evident in the widening gap between the iceberg and ice shelf.
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Image: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
