An iceberg twice the size of Long Island has broken free from Antarctica.
The iceberg cleaved away on July 12 from an area known as the Larsen C Ice Shelf. The cleaving is a naturally occuring process, but icebergs this big are rare.
Just how big is it exactly?
The breakaway ice covers a whopping 2,200 square miles, that’s enough to cover the five boroughs of New York City seven times over:
That is about the same size of Delaware, or the equivalent of 100 Manhattans.
The iceberg packs enough ice to fill Lake Erie twice over. Put another way, it would take up as much space as 1,657 Empire State Buildings.
Here is how it stacks up to some other parts of the U.S.:
Miami
Austin / San Antonio
Grand Canyon
San Francisco
The break has been on its way for a long time, with the main crack in the ice visible since the 1960s. Icebergs breaking away from the continent is a natural process in Antarctica, and not a new phenomenon brought about by climate change.
However scientists warn that climate change could prevent new ice from forming in the years to come. For more check out the NASA Earth Observatory.
