An iceberg over 100 square miles in size has broken off of the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, The Washington Post reported.
Manhattan, at 22.7 square miles, is only one quarter the size of the iceberg, which comes only two months after an iceberg the size of Delaware broke off of Antarctica in July.
Satellite observation specialist Stef Lhermitte of the Netherland’s Delft University of Technology uploaded a picture of the event onto Twitter last week, describing it as the fifth largest "calving" event since 2000.
NASA and a team of researchers from Ohio State University confirmed the break to the Post. The University's Seongsu Jeong and Ian Howat released a paper last year revealing that rifts have begun forming in the center, instead of around the sides, of the Pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf, possibly due to rising ocean temperatures.
"We predicted that the rifting would result in more frequent calving, which is what's happening here," Howat told the Post in an email. "If new rifts continue to form progressively inland, the significance to ice shelf retreat would be high."
"A series of thin cracks was visible in the center of the ice shelf about 3 km inland of the current break in March 2017," he added. "We don't have any more recent data to see what its status is. But this means that we would expect another calving event very soon."