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00:03 When massive icebergs break loose from places
00:06 like Antarctica, it can send tons of ice floating elsewhere.
00:09 And it's one of the most illustrative signs
00:11 of global warming.
00:12 Well, experts say one of these calving events
00:15 has happened again, the third such event
00:17 in just the last four years.
00:19 The iceberg broke loose on May 20,
00:21 captured in this image by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite.
00:24 The giant iceberg has now been named A83.
00:27 And you can see it breaking free.
00:29 And it's utterly massive.
00:31 Experts say this chunk of ice is around 147 square miles in area,
00:36 or nearly seven times the size of Manhattan in New York.
00:39 This and other calving events like it
00:41 reveal a weakening of ice in Antarctica,
00:43 caused by increasing temperatures at our poles.
00:46 The effects of global warming tend
00:48 to be more extreme in the coldest areas of the planet,
00:51 with temperatures going up faster at the poles
00:52 than anywhere else.
00:53 Calving events like this are of particular import
00:56 to climate scientists as well.
00:58 When giant ice sheets break loose,
00:59 they not only indicate warming oceans,
01:01 but these sheets also melt faster as a result,
01:04 raising sea levels and acidifying our planet's waters
01:06 at a quicker rate.
01:07 This also exposes a greater area of the ocean water
01:11 to solar radiation, exacerbating the problem even further.
01:15 (upbeat music)
01:18 (upbeat music)
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