Since breaking from the Brunt Ice Shelf in May 2024, a large Antarctic iceberg spent the first few months of its existence mostly hemmed in by the surrounding glue-like sea ice, especially in the new rifts.
Since breaking from the Brunt Ice Shelf in May 2024, a large Antarctic iceberg spent the first few months of its existence mostly hemmed in by the surrounding glue-like sea ice, especially in the new rifts. But late in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, when sea ice began to fracture and drift, Iceberg A-83 made some progress in its seaward journey away from the shelf.
These false-color images show the iceberg on May 22, 2024 (left), shortly after the ice broke from the shelf, and on August 26, 2024 (right). Both images were acquired with the TIRS-2 (Thermal Infrared Sensor-2) on Landsat 9. They are part of a special expanded data collection program called LEAP (Landsat Extended Acquisitions of the Poles), which has been building year-round image records of glaciers, ice shelves, and sea ice around Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic Ocean since 2022.
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. Winter in the region lasts from March through October, with 105 of these days engulfed in 24-hour darkness, according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The BAS operates the Halley VI Research Station, which is located on the remainder of the Brunt Ice Shelf.
Read more at NASA Earth Observatory
Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
