A-76: The world's largest iceberg

The world’s largest iceberg, dubbed A-76, has calved from Antarctica. This animation uses images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission and shows the giant slab of ice breaking off from the Ronne Ice Shelf, lying in the Weddell Sea, on 13 May 2021.

The iceberg measures around 4320 sq km in size – currently making it the largest berg in the world. The berg is around 170 km in length and 25 km wide, and is slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca.

The original image can be accessed here.

The iceberg was spotted by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed from the US National Ice Center using Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery. The Sentinel-1 mission consists of two polar-orbiting satellites that rely on C-band synthetic aperture radar imaging, returning data regardless of whether it is day or night, allowing us year-round viewing of remote regions like Antarctica.