Ice shelf

Sea ice levels in Antarctica have registered historic lows for three consecutive years, portending grave consequences for life on Earth as we know it.

But looking out over the southernmost continent, scientist Miguel Angel de Pablo laments that humanity seems to be oblivious to the warnings.

Even in Antarctica, one of the most remote and desolate places on Earth, scientists say they are finding shattered temperature records and an increase in the size and number of wacky weather events.

A huge iceberg nearly the size of Greater London has broken off the Antarctic ice shelf near a research station, the second such split in two years, researchers announced on Jan. 23.

A mammoth slab of ice has separated from the frozen edge of Antarctica in the Weddell Sea, giving birth to the world's largest iceberg, the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement on Wednesday.

The iceberg is about the size of Sofia Municipality.

More than 315 billion tonnes of ice have broken off from the Antarctic in the form of a huge iceberg. The ice slice covers an area of ​​approximately 1600 square kilometers, which is approximately the size of Sofia Municipality.

A sharp-angled, tabular iceberg floats among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf in the northern Antarctic Peninsula. Picture taken on Oct. 16. (NASA / Jeremy Harbeck)

A giant iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off an ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea.

"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.

One of the largest icebergs ever recorded — 2,500 square miles is about to break off Antarctica, according to the European Space Agency. The iceberg could speed up the break-off of other ice chunks, eventually eating away at a barrier that prevents ice from flowing to the sea.

Scientists have discovered massive landforms lurking under Antarctica – some as tall as the Eiffel Tower – and they’ve been actively carving deep channels into the ice flow above.