A huge iceberg in Antarctica has sliced off revealing a world undiscovered for more than 120,000 years. The slab of ice, which was about four times the size of London, was part of the Larsen Ice Shelf.
As it melted, it revealed a part of water never seen before. Luckily, this hasn’t massively effected sea level. This iceberg is one of the biggest ever recorded. The Larsen Ice shelf is an essential barriers for glaciers. Without it, ice would flow from land to sea. So if all the ice shelves were to disintergrate, the rise in sea level would be catastrophic.
“It is a really major event in terms of the size of the ice tablet that we’ve got now drifting away,” said Anna Hogg, an expert in satellite observations of glaciers from the University of Leeds.
The remaining Larsen ice shelf is now 12% smaller in area than before the iceberg broke off – or “calved” – an event that researchers say has changed the landscape of the Antarctic peninsula and left the Larsen ice shelf at its lowest extent ever recorded.
Now, scientists are doing a three week expedition to find out more about this newly discovered land in Antarctica.