
"It's one that's large enough that it warrants monitoring," Brunt said in a telephone interview, noting that U.S. government organizations including the National Ice Center keep an eye on dozens of icebergs at any given time.
The iceberg's present location is not in an area heavily navigated by ships. "There's not a lot of shipping traffic down there. We're not particularly concerned about shipping lanes. We know where all the big ones are," she said.
Scientists are especially interested in this iceberg not only because of its size but because it originated in an unexpected location, said Brunt. "It's like a large sheet cake floating through the Southern Ocean," she added.
The glacial crack that created the iceberg was first detected in 2011, according to Brunt, a scientist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Morgan State University in Maryland. Pine Island Glacier has been closely studied over the past two decades because it has been thinning and draining rapidly and may be an important contributor to sea level rise, scientists say.....
A November 2013 NASA image of the Pine Island Glacier
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