An iceberg more than four times the size of Phoenix 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 occurring process, but icebergs this big are rare.
Just how big is it exactly?
The breakaway ice covers a whopping 2,200 square miles! While that is four times the area of Phoenix itself at 517 square miles, the iceberg still doesn’t measure up to the greater Phoenix metro area, which is more more than 9,000 square miles.
The iceberg would cover the Grand Canyon, surpassing the park’s 1,900 square mile area.
Grand Canyon
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.:
New York City
Miami
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.
