Iceberg Rams Glacier and the Glacier Loses

In 1992, a 60 miles long iceberg in the Southern Ocean, named B-9B, which had calved from an even larger iceberg -- B9 – ran aground off the coast of Antarctica, not far in nautical miles from the Mertz Glacier Tongue. In February of this year, B-9B was back at sea and rammed into the glacier tongue. The result is a new iceberg named C-28, measuring 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, and weighing in at 860 billion tons. The collision is shown in an animation from eight radar images made by Envisat the largest earth observation spacecraft ever built.

An agency which will watch what the two icebergs do in the weeks ahead is the National Ice
Center in Maryland. Operated by the Navy, Coast Guard, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the center provides information on snow and ice conditions around the world and tracks icebergs. In the Antarctic, icebergs must be 10 nautical miles and a set distance from the South Pole to be named and tracked.

Dividing the continent in four quadrants, the center names icebergs for the quadrant where they calved and assigns a number according to its sequence in breaking away. C-28 is the 28th iceberg to be formed in the C quadrant, which faces Australia.