"A Huge Iceberg Split From Antarctica. (They Just Grew Apart.)"

"A massive iceberg with the robotic sounding name D28 has separated in recent days from an ice shelf in Antarctica, prompting both awe and concern around the world.

Measuring 610 square miles, D28 is slightly larger than Oahu, Hawaii, and some are worried that its fracture from the Amery Ice Shelf is a signal of climate change.

“This is normal behavior for an ice sheet to lose mass like this,” said Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Fricker is part of the team that helped identify the calving event, the technical term for the split. She said such events happen roughly every 60 or 70 years. “The danger with this event is that it shouldn’t be interpreted out of context.”"

Kendra Pierre-Louis reports for the New York Times October 1, 2019.

Source: NY Times, 10/04/2019